DESEGREGATION AT KANSAS CITY’S CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL:
ILLUMINATING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENT
EXPERIENCE THROUGH ORAL HISTORY
A DISSERTATION IN
Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations
and
Social Science Consortium
Presented to the Faculty of the University
of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
by
BRADLEY W. POOS
B.A., University of Kansas, 2001
M.Ed. Rockhurst University, 2003
M.A., University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2008
Kansas City, Missouri
2014
©2014
BRADLEY W. POOS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
DESEGREGATION AT KANSAS CITY’S CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL:
ILLUMINATING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENT
EXPERIENCE THROUGH ORAL HISTORY
Bradley W. Poos, Candidate for Doctorate of Philosophy Degree
University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2014
ABSTRACT
Central High School, the oldest high school in Kansas City, serves as an example of
how radically education in Kansas City, Missouri, has changed over the course of the last
150 years. Beginning as part of Kansas City, Missouri’s, segregated public school system,
Central was the city’s first all-white high school and remained as such for the better part of
ninety years. In 1955, following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Kansas City,
Missouri, School district began a process of desegregation; Central High School’s student
population promptly transformed from all white in 1955 to nearly all black in 1962. This
project explores the history of Kansas City’s Central High School, investigating how the
Kansas City, Missouri School District’s approach to desegregation affected Central High
School and in particular, Central’s black students. With an emphasis on oral history, I set out
to ascertain the African American student experience at Central High School, especially
during the magnet years, 1988 to 1999, a period in which the Kansas City, Missouri School
District underwent the most expensive and expansive desegregation remedy to date.
iii
APPROVAL PAGE
The faculty listed below, appointed by the Dean of the School of Education, have
examined a dissertation titled “Desegregation at Kansas City’s Central High School:
Illuminating the African American Student’s Experience through Oral History” presented by
Bradley W. Poos, candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, and certify that in their
opinion it is worthy of acceptance.
Supervisory Committee
Donna Davis, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Foundations
Doug Bowles, Ph.D.
Department of Social Science Consortium
Clovis Semmes, Ph.D.
Black Studies Program
Loyce Caruthers, Ph.D.
Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Foundations
S. Marie McCarther, Ed.D.
Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Foundations
iv
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... viii
Chapter
1. STUDY AT A GLANCE: INTRODUCTION, SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY,
AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS......................................................................... 1
Introduction............................................................................................... 1
Scope and Methodology ........................................................................... 3
Research Questions ................................................................................... 9
Overview of Chapters ............................................................................. 10
2. THE EARLY YEARS: RACE AND EDUCATION IN KANSAS CITY,
MISSOURI, 1821-1867 ...................................................................................... 12
The Origins of a Slave State ................................................................... 12
African American Schooling in Antebellum Missouri ........................... 19
A City Developed ................................................................................... 23
Missouri’s Dual School System.............................................................. 27
Black Enclaves and Growth of Kansas City’s African
American Population ........................................................................ 34
3. KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI’S, DUAL SYSTEM AND GROWTH OF PUBLIC
SCHOOLING, 1867-1942 .................................................................................. 38
Kansas City, Missouri’s, First Black Public Schools, 1867-1920 .......... 38
The Formation of All-white Central High School, 1867-1893............... 44
Down at Eleventh and Locust, Central High School, 1893-1915........... 51
New Building; Same Ol’ Central, 1915-1922 ........................................ 57
Growth in Kansas City’s Southeast Corridor, 1922-1929 ...................... 64
v
Financial Crisis and the Kansas City, Missouri School District,
1929-1942 ......................................................................................... 69
4. FROM SEGREGATION TO DESEGREGATION, 1942-1962 ............................. 76
World War II and Hope for Equality, 1942-1948................................... 76
Racial Homogeneity and Housing, 1948-1952 ....................................... 81
Brown v. Board of Education and Destruction of the Dual System,
1952-1954 ......................................................................................... 84
Desegregation in the Kansas City, Missouri School District,
1955-1962 ......................................................................................... 93
Central High School and Its Neighborhoods, 1955-1962..................... 101
5. WHERE’S THE EQUALITY? THE RESEGREGATION OF THE
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI SCHOOL DISTRICT, 1962-1968.................... 111
Success at Central High School, 1962-1964......................................... 111
A Growing Discontentment, 1964-1965............................................... 117
Havighurst and the Middle School Controversy, 1965-1968 ............... 125
The Riot of 1968 ................................................................................... 134
6. DESEGREGATION AVERTED: THE ONGOING STRUGGLE FOR
EQUALITY, 1968-1977 ................................................................................... 141
Kansas City’s Southeast Side, 1968-1970 ............................................ 141
Falling out of Favor: Central High School’s Public Perception,
1970-1973 ....................................................................................... 145
Federal Oversight and the ESAA, 1973 ............................................... 154
Flat Broke and Federal Scrutiny, 1973-1976 ........................................ 162
Plan 6C, 1976-1977 .............................................................................. 169
7. A NEW DIRECTION: FROM METROPOLITAN PLAN TO MAGNET
REMEDY, 1977-1988 ...................................................................................... 179
The Suburban Dilemma, 1977-1980..................................................... 179
vi
The Growing Popularity of Magnet Schools and Voluntary
Desegregation, 1980-1984 ............................................................ 181
All But Forgotten: Central High School in the Early 1980s ................. 186
Money and Magnets in Kansas City, Missouri, 1984-1987 ................. 192
Planning Kansas City’s Computer Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet High School, 1987-1988 .................................................... 201
8. A NEW ERA: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENT EXPERIENCE AT
CENTRAL COMPUTERS UNLIMITED/CLASSICAL GREEK MAGNET
HIGH SCHOOL, 1988-1999 ............................................................................ 209
The Computer Magnet, 1988-1991 ...................................................... 209
New Beginnings, 1991-1992 ................................................................ 220
In Full Swing, 1992-1995 ..................................................................... 232
The Class of 1995 ................................................................................. 239
Missouri v. Jenkins and Its Implications............................................... 247
The Final Years, 1995-1999 ................................................................. 251
9: CONCLUSION: INTERPRETATIONS AND APPLICATIONS OF
THE RESEARCH ............................................................................................. 264
The Clock Runs out on Kansas City, Missouri’s, Magnet Plan ........... 264
Oral History Revelations ...................................................................... 268
Concluding Thoughts............................................................................ 275
BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................ 277
VITA ................................................................................................................................ 289
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project has been a labor of love, and I would like to dedicate it to all graduates
of Kansas City’s Central High School past, present, and future. So here’s to the students of
“Dear Old Central,” a school with a storied history that reveals much about race and
education in Kansas City.
There are many people whom I would like to thank, but of course, my work would
not have been possible without the voices of former Central students. I most certainly owe a
debt of gratitude to the narrators who were willing to share with me their time and personal
stories. Thank you to Gwendolyn Adams (class of 1958), Lyle Davis, Jr. (class of 1958),
Forestal Lawton (class of 1962), Loretta Stewart (class of 1963), Dr. J. Anthony Snorgrass
(class of 1970), Arthur Jackson (class of 1974), Marion Halim (class of 1975), Lee Barnes,
Jr. (class of 1982), Connie Wright (class of 1982), Crystal Shakur (class of 1989), Daryl
Norton (class of 1990), Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway (class of 1992), Christopher Slaughter
(class of 1993), Melanie Evans (class of 1993), Quincy Williams (class of 1993), Terrence
Lasker (class of 1995), Monika Anderson (class of 1995), Jermaine Wilson (class of 1997),
Michael Watson (class of 1999), and William Winston (class of 1999). Your participation
has enriched our collective understanding of Central High School’s history and the African
American student experience.
Thank you, too, to community members and former teachers and coaches at Central
High School, Willie Mahone, Vladimir Nazlymov, Arthur Rainwater, Arthur Benson, and
Alvin Brooks for sharing your valuable insight and experience.
To my professors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who have beautifully
guided me through the dissertation process and have given me the knowledge and skill to do
viii
it successfully, thank you. I appreciate, especially, the advocacy of Dr. Caruthers,
Dr. Friend, and Dr. Jacob; I appreciate you. I want to acknowledge the work of my
committee at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, especially Dr. Donna Davis, my
committee chair, whose deep understanding and knowledge have been most valuable.
I have spent countless hours in local archives and want to recognize the efforts of
archivists who have made this process smooth and enjoyable. Thank you to Jeremy Drouin,
Lucinda Adams, and the staff of the Missouri Valley Special Collections, as well as Nancy
Piepenbring and David Boutros at the State Historical Society of Missouri on the campus of
the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Thank you, as well, to Connie Mahone, Pam
O’Neal, Barbara Johnson, and Joe Louis Mattox for reaching out to the Central High School
community on my behalf and aiding my efforts in locating and contacting narrators.
Last, but not least, I want to thank my family. To my wife, Heather, and our two
(soon-to-be three) kids, Lily and Hank, thank you for sacrificing so that I may realize my
dreams. Your unselfishness throughout this process has been so greatly appreciated. Your
faith in me has seen me through this academic marathon, and your steadfast support and
encouragement have taught me how to believe in myself. I love you!
ix
CHAPTER 1
STUDY AT A GLANCE: INTRODUCTION, SCOPE AND
METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH, AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Introduction
Kansas City is a typical Midwestern city. The summers are hot. The winters are cold,
and the people are generally friendly. But veiled in its normalcy hides a dirty secret. Kansas
City is deeply divided. With little crossover, to the east of Troost resides a majority-black
community and to the west, a majority-white. On the surface, Kansas City is interesting for
its dividing line, not Troost Avenue, but State Line Road. State Line is a clear marker, a
street that runs north-south through metropolitan Kansas City and identifies Kansas Citians
as either residents of Missouri or Kansas. Thus, history is still relevant in Kansas City, as
one’s identification as either a Missourian or Kansan actually means something. While the
rivalry between the Bushwhackers of Missouri and the Jayhawkers of Kansas is no longer
marred in blood, it definitely lives on. The onetime slave state and the Free State certainly
have their differences, but the competition has been relegated to entertaining arguments
about who has the better roads, superior shopping establishments, or most importantly, the
most successful athletic team. The one exception, however, is the issue of schools.
As is common in most American cities, the residents of greater Kansas City take
their education seriously. The Kansas side of the metropolitan area is home to the big three:
Blue Valley School District, Olathe School District, and Shawnee Mission School District,
three of the highest performing public school districts in the state and all of them located in
1
the surrounding Kansas City suburbs.1 Conversely, Missourians can boast of three suburban
districts of their own: Liberty School District, Park Hill School District, and Lee’s Summit
School District, each of which is at or above eighty percent white.2 All of the
aforementioned suburban districts are known for their academic success and affluent student
body.
Absent from both of these lists are the two oldest districts on both sides of State Line
Road, the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools and the Kansas City, Missouri School
District.3 As the two primary urban districts in the greater Kansas City area, it is not
surprising that the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools and Kansas City, Missouri School
District serve mostly students of color. Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools’ demographics
reveal that thirty-six percent of students are black, forty-three percent are Hispanic, and only
fourteen percent are white.4 Sixty-three percent of Kansas City, Missouri School District’s
students are black, twenty-seven percent are Hispanic, and just fewer than eight percent are
white.5 Both districts have long struggled with academic performance, but the problems on
the Missouri side are particularly dire. The Kansas City, Missouri School District is
currently unaccredited, having lost accreditation less than a year ago in 2013, and enrollment
has experienced a steady decline. In 2003, there were nearly 30,000 students in the district,
Blue Valley School District (3% black), Olathe School District (7% black), and Shawnee Mission School
District (12% black); Kansas State Department of Education, “Statistics,” 2013, www.ksde.org.
1
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, “District and School Information,” 2013,
www.dese.mo.gov.
2
3
Although the Kansas City, Missouri School District is currently called the Kansas City Public Schools, for
consistency in this dissertation, it will be referred to in its more traditional form as the Kansas City, Missouri
School District.
4
Kansas State Department of Education.
5
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
2
but by 2012 that number had dropped to roughly 15,000. The numbers are even more
alarming when considering student enrollment hovered around 75,000 in the mid-1960s.6
Additionally, the number of students receiving free and reduced lunch has risen by ten
percent in the last decade, reaching almost ninety percent in 2012. The dropout rate has seen
a similar rise, increasing from just below four percent in 2003 to just above fourteen percent
in 2012.7 The Kansas City, Missouri School District is at a critical juncture, but this did not
happen suddenly. The struggles of the Kansas City, Missouri School District have resulted
from a complex interplay of many variables that can be traced through an historical analysis.
Of particular importance, however, is the subject of race, which has influenced the
development of both Missouri and Kansas City. Race was a defining issue in the creation of
Missouri; it was also central to the development of Kansas City. Race has continued to hold
great significance, especially in education.
Scope and Methodology
This interdisciplinary dissertation, which merges the disciplines of education and the
social sciences, is a history of an institution, Central High School, from its inception in 1867
until 1999, that serves as a lens through which to examine efforts of desegregation in Kansas
City. In particular, this study examines desegregation at Kansas City’s Central High School
from the perspective of African American students in order to better understand how
desegregation shaped their experiences. Scholarly histories of individual public schools are
limited, especially histories that specifically utilize the experiences of African American
students. While race and equality in the Kansas City, Missouri School District were the
Peter Morrison, Forecasting Enrollments during Court-Ordered Desegregation (Santa Monica, CA: Rand
Corporation, 1994).
6
7
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
3
centerpiece of books by Joshua Dunn and Peter Moran, neither approaches the issue from a
student perspective.8
Indeed, the literature surrounding federal, state, and district level efforts toward
desegregation in Kansas City and elsewhere around the country is relatively stout, but there
are few studies that explore the lived experiences of students at their respective institutions.
This study does just that—it emphasizes the experiences of students through oral history and
illuminates the stories of former Central students. Thus, this dissertation provides fresh
insight into understanding how desegregation efforts affected the lived experiences of
African American students, a group that has largely been neglected throughout history.
This study will explore the history of Kansas City’s Central High School within the
broader context of the Kansas City, Missouri School District, focusing in particular on
district efforts toward desegregation. The magnet years represent a particularly intriguing
epoch, a time when The Kansas City, Missouri School District was involved in a costly
magnet remedy that transformed all of its high schools into magnet schools with specialized
curricula. Central High School was at the forefront of the magnet plan. Referred to as the
Taj Mahal, Central was rebuilt as the Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet
High School in 1991, complete with a thirty-three million dollar state-of-the-art facility. The
magnet plan was merely one of many attempts undertaken by the Kansas City, Missouri
School District to integrate its schools, but it represents the most costly desegregation plan
to date, amounting to roughly two billion dollars in expenditures. Central High School
provides a particularly salient example of these efforts. As the oldest high school in Kansas
Joshua Dunn, Complex Justice: The Case of Missouri v. Jenkins (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2008); Peter W. Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools (New York: LFB
Scholarly Publishing, 2005).
8
4
City, Central has a rich and storied history. Having gone from all white in 1955 to nearly all
black by 1962, there is arguably no school that exemplifies the relationship between race
and education in Kansas City like that of Central High School. The year 1977 marked the
beginning of the Jenkins v. Missouri case and two decades of litigation that transformed
schools such as Kansas City’s Central High School into magnet schools.
While narratives of black former students at Central High School will be interwoven
throughout, emphasis will be placed on the magnet years, 1988-1999. Many of Kansas
City’s schools were transformed into magnet schools throughout the 1980s and early 1990s,
but when the Supreme Court pulled funding from the Kansas City, Missouri School District
in 1995, the magnet-themed school approach quickly lost favor. Thus, the Kansas City,
Missouri School District began phasing out magnet schools and returning them to
neighborhood schools in 1999. This study, then, provides a history of Kansas City’s Central
High School and details, specifically, the African American student’s experience.
Oral history is essential to this study. Oral history represents a way of ascertaining a
fuller, more accurate picture of the past by augmenting the information provided by
traditional archival methods. Oral history fills in the gaps in documented history and is
particularly useful in exploring the stories of underrepresented peoples, such as those
silenced as a result of gender, class, race, or ethnicity.9 This is not to suggest that traditional
archival methods are not important; indeed, they are, but oral history brings depth to the
understanding of history by considering experience at the individual level. Tyson suggests
that, unlike written history, in which the scholar reconstructs evidence developed in the past,
Mary Larson, “Research Design and Strategies,” in History of Oral History: Foundations and
Methodology, eds. Thomas Charleton, Lois Meyers, and Rebecca Sharpless (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press,
2007).
9
5
oral history is “a dynamic process that creates evidence about the past and allows
undocumented perspectives to emerge, perhaps for the first time.”10 Oral history is about
enriching historical understanding through the use of interview, which is what I have done
with former African American students of Kansas City’s Central High School. As such, this
study brings a slightly different perspective to the issue of school desegregation by
illuminating the voices of students, an approach that has been underutilized in the Kansas
City story but offers great value in better understanding how individuals of color were
affected by desegregation. Approaching the issue of desegregation in Kansas City from such
a perspective re-situates the focus from the macro level to the micro level and thus
represents an opportunity to understand the experiences of individual students—in this case,
former African American students at Central High School.
Oral history, however, represents only one lens, albeit a vital one. Whereas oral
history interviews personalize an often impersonal historical understanding, I also utilized
local archives to situate, most broadly, the history of race and schooling in Kansas City,
Missouri, and more specifically, the history of Central High School within the story of
desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools. Two archives, in particular, were most
useful: The Missouri Valley Special Collections housed in the Central Branch of the Kansas
City Public Library contains a wide array of primary documents regarding the history of
public education in Kansas City, and The State Historical Society of Missouri located on the
campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City is home to the Arthur A. Benson II
Papers.
Thomas Tyson, “Rendering the Unfamiliar Intelligible: Discovering the Human Side of Accounting’s
Past through Oral History Interviews,” The Accounting Historians Journal 23, no. 2 (December 1996): 87-109.
10
6
Maps, photos, newspaper clippings, and district board meeting notes, as well as
personal communications, such as letters and memos, are all housed in The Missouri Valley
Special Collections. Additionally, the Kansas City Star, Kansas City Times, and Kansas City
Call are available on microfilm. Specific to Central High School, historical yearbooks and
newspapers, as well as a variety of miscellaneous documents are accessible. Archived
Central High School yearbooks, the Centralian, are available from 1899 and continue
through, with few missing issues, to 2000. Archived Central High School newspapers, the
Luminary, are accessible from the late 1800s and continue through 1975, with only a
handful of issues missing. I diligently went through each issue of the Centralian and the
Central Luminary.
The Arthur A. Benson II Papers located at The State Historical Society of Missouri
consists of over five hundred boxes of archived legal records: memos, letters, newspaper
article clippings, secondary sources, and depositions regarding desegregation in Kansas
City, Missouri. The collection is divided among ready reference materials and primary
sources. The reference materials include summary information explaining the documents
available in the primary sources section. The primary sources include the actual unedited
materials used in the Jenkins case, including depositions and exhibits. The collection is
mostly unprocessed, though there is a finding aide. The information included in the finding
aide, however, is not detailed. Most of the boxes exist in the condition in which they were
left by the trial team, with some boxes better organized than others. I identified roughly fifty
boxes of relevance and went through each box.
Additionally, there are community members, former district employees, and legal
counsel whose insight, expertise, and life experiences have enhanced the data collection.
7
Among those are the following: Alvin Brooks, longtime community activist and currently
president of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime located at Thirty-First and Prospect on
Kansas City’s Southeast side; Art Rainwater, former principal of Central Computers
Unlimited Magnet and lead design strategist and task force leader for the computers magnet
theme at Central; Arthur A. Benson II, lead attorney for the plaintiffs during the Jenkins case
and former Kansas City, Missouri School District School Board member; Vladimir
Nazlymov, former fencing coach at Central Computers Unlimited/Greek Magnet and now
head fencing coach at Ohio State University; and Willie Mahone, former assistant principal
at Central Computers Unlimited/Greek Magnet.
Unstructured oral history interviews were conducted with former students of Central
High School and Central Computers Unlimited/Greek Magnet. All of those interviewed
were black, as the intent of this dissertation is to illuminate the African American student
experience. Interviews were conducted with students who attended Central High School
between 1955 and 1982 in order to gain insight into the experiences of students in the
decades following district efforts of desegregation in the immediate post-Brown period.
These narrators included the following individuals: Gwendolyn Adams, class of 1958; Lyle
Davis, Jr., class of 1958; Forestal Lawton, class of 1962; Loretta Stewart, class of 1963;
Dr. J. Anthony Snorgrass, class of 1970; Arthur Jackson, class of 1974; Marion Halim, class
of 1975; Lee Barnes, Jr., class of 1982; and Connie Wright, class of 1982. Oral history
interviews were also conducted with eleven black former students of Central Computers
Unlimited/Greek Magnet between 1988 and 1999. The eleven students were selected
through snowball sampling techniques and were selected randomly based on my access and
their willingness. The narrators were the following individuals: Crystal Shakur, class of
8
1989; Darryl Norton, class of 1990; Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway, class of 1992;
Christopher Slaughter, class of 1993; Quincy Williams, class of 1993; Melanie Evans, class
of 1993; Terrence Lasker, class of 1995; Monika Anderson, class of 1995; Jermaine Wilson,
class of 1997; Michael Watson, Jr., class of 1999, and William Winston, class of 1999.
I acknowledge my white, male, middle-class privilege in this process and have
continuously worked to ensure that my life experiences and privileged status are not an
impediment to the interview process and data analysis. As such, I have had each narrator
review his or her interview, and I have also employed the use of a “critical friend,” a person
of color who has looked over my work to ensure that my particular worldview has not
served as a barrier to illuminating the experiences of black students.
Utilizing oral history interviews and supporting the interviews with archival research
provides great insight into how district level efforts of desegregation were experienced by
African American students at a single institution and will add to the literature about school
desegregation in Kansas City.
Research Questions
What were the experiences of African American Students at Central High School
between 1988 and 1999?
What structures of academic and social support existed for African American
students at Central during the identified years?
What were African American students’ perceptions of efforts to integrate Central
during the magnet years?
9
How did the magnet theme affect the subsequent lives of the individuals
interviewed?
Overview of Chapters
Nine chapters comprise this dissertation, including Chapter 1, Study at a Glance:
Introduction, Scope and Methodology, and Research Questions and Chapter 9, Conclusion:
Interpretations and Applications of the Research. Chapter 2, The Early Years: Race and
Education in Kansas City, Missouri, 1821-1867 examines issues of race and education in
Kansas City, Missouri, from Missouri’s conception in 1821 to the founding of public
education in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1867. Beginning with considering the role of slavery
in pre-war Missouri, Chapter 1 provides insight into how contentious race relations in the
antebellum period intersected with education. Chapter 3, The Growth of Public Schooling
and Kansas City’s Central High School, 1867-1942 explores the creation and growth of
Kansas City, Missouri’s, dual public school system. In particular, Chapter 3 details the
development of the city’s first high school, all-white Central High School. Chapter 4, From
Segregation to Desegregation, 1942-1962 begins with a consideration of the societal
changes that occurred during and after World War II, before moving into the Brown v.
Board of Education case and the destruction of the dual system in Kansas City, Missouri.
Chapter 5, Where’s the Equality? The Resegregation of the Kansas City, Missouri School
District, 1962-1968 looks into the successes of all-black Central High School in the early
1960s, and then explores the controversial desegregation plan implemented in Kansas City,
Missouri. Additionally, Chapter 5 explains the middle school controversy and the growing
frustration of local civil rights groups and the black community with the Kansas City,
Missouri School District. It ends with considering the race riots of 1968. Chapter 6,
10
Desegregation Averted: The Ongoing Struggle for Equality, 1968-1977 begins with
exploring the changing demographics of Kansas City’s southeast side before specifically
exploring how a negative public perception affected all-black Central High School. The
chapter concludes by considering how federal oversight and the district’s growing financial
problems influenced efforts toward desegregation in Kansas City, Missouri. Chapter 7, A
New Direction: From Metropolitan Plan to Magnet Remedy, 1977-1988 describes how
suburban growth and white flight led to district efforts to implement a mandatory city-wide
desegregation plan. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the transition from
mandatory to voluntary desegregation and its implications for Central High School. Chapter
8, A New Era: The African American Student Experience at Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School, 1988-1999 utilized oral history to consider
how Central’s dual magnet theme affected the lives of eleven former black students.
11
CHAPTER 2
THE EARLY YEARS: RACE AND EDUCATION
IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, 1821-1867
The Origins of a Slave State
Organized in 1812, the territory of Missouri gained statehood in 1820 and was
formally admitted into the Union by President James Monroe on August 10, 1821, as the
twenty-fourth state. Missouri’s path to statehood was not effortless, however, as the question
of slavery loomed large. 1 In 1804, the Louisiana Territory, under the direction of Amos
Stoddard, commandant of the Upper Louisiana district, was divided by an act of Congress
into two: the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana. Missouri was included in the
District of Louisiana and came under the jurisdiction of the Territory of Indiana and General
W. H. Harrison. Unhappy with the new arrangement, Missourians protested their
subordination to Indiana and were granted separate territorial status in 1804.2 In 1817,
Missourians started asking for statehood. An 1818 bill permitted formation of a constitution
and state government, though the Tallmadge Amendment blocked this attempt at statehood
in 1819, stating the following:
The further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for
the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall be duly convicted; and that all
1
Perry McCandless, A History of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972).
R. I. Brigham, “Negro Education in Ante Bellum Missouri prior to 1861,” Journal of Negro History 30,
no. 4 (1945), 143-157.
2
12
children of slaves born within the said state, after the admission thereof into the
union shall be free but may be held to service until the age of twenty-five years.3
The amendment proposed by James Tallmadge, Jr., a Northern opponent of slavery, was
enough to stop Missouri’s path to statehood, though a later amendment, the Thomas
Amendment, temporarily calmed the Congressional storm on the question of slavery long
enough to grant permission for the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1820.4 The
Thomas Amendment, introduced by Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois, called for and encouraged
conciliation:
And be it further enacted, That, in all that territory ceded by France to the United
States, under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty
minutes north latitude, excepting only such part thereof as is included within the
limits of the State contemplated by this act, slavery and involuntary servitude,
otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall be and is hereby forever prohibited…5
Thus, with compromise affirmed and her constitution framed, on March 6, 1820, the people
of Missouri were subsequently empowered to organize a government, which they did with
deliberate speed. Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1821 as a slave state.6 Black slavery
became a defining feature of Missouri’s early years as a state, but the origins of slavery in
Missouri can be traced back to the early eighteenth century.
While European interest in African slavery began in the fifteenth century, the use of
African slaves became widespread in the New World in the seventeenth and eighteenth
3
Norman Desmarais and James McGovern, Missouri Compromise—The Tallmadge Amendment, February
13, 1819 (Toledo: Great Neck Publishing, 2009).
4
Brigham, “Negro Education in Ante Bellum Missouri prior to 1861.”
Norman Desmarais and James McGovern, Missouri Compromise—The Thomas Amendment, February
17, 1820 (Toledo: Great Neck Publishing, 2009).
5
6
McCandless, A History of Missouri.
13
centuries.7 In Missouri, the use of black slaves began in the eighteenth century when
introduced by the French. Sir Philip Francois Renault was among the first to purchase
bondspersons to work the lead mines in the southeastern part of the state.8 Renault, director
of the Company of the West, reportedly stopped in San Domingo in 1719 and purchased five
hundred slaves to work the mines and then proceeded to the upper Louisiana Territory.9 In
essence, the French viewed black slaves as a solution to a severe labor shortage encountered
throughout the New World. Mining for lead and silver was tough work, and the French saw
in African slaves a solution, indeed a better solution than enslaving Native Americans, who
posed some potential risk.10 Conversely, African slaves were thousands of miles from home,
had little, if any, familiarity with the terrain, and because they were black, they were
immediately noticeable across the New World.11 By the mid-eighteenth century, with the
founding of St. Genevieve as the first permanent white settlement in Missouri, black slaves
had become a vital and widely accepted component of the French-American economy.12
Slavery was further strengthened in Missouri by the passage of the Ordinance of
1787, prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory and resulting in slaves and slaveowners seeking refuge in Missouri. With Spanish inheritance of the Louisiana Territory
following the conclusion of the French and Indian War, in which France gifted the territory
7
Joe Trotter, The African American Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).
8
Harriet Frazier, Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2001).
9
Brigham, “Negro Education in Ante Bellum Missouri prior to 1861.”
Gary Kremer and Antonio Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage: Revised Edition (Columbia: University
of Missouri Press, 1993).
10
11
Ibid.
12
Earl Collins and Eugene Snider, Missouri: Midland State (St. Louis: Webster Publishing, 1955).
14
to Spain as payment for Spanish losses, slavery grew even more in popularity.13 France
would eventually take the Louisiana Territory back from Spain in the early nineteenth
century before selling the territory to the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
France’s empire in the Western Hemisphere was eroding as the Haitian Revolution, which
resulted in the establishment of an independent Haiti in 1804, had caused grave financial
constraints on the French, who had been fighting the slave revolt since 1791. As a result, the
French were willing to sell the Louisiana Territory to the Americans at a heavily discounted
price. Additionally, the Haitian revolution also seemed to cause Southern slaveholders to
grow increasingly headstrong in their opposition to the abolition of slavery. The
emancipation of slaves in America, it was reasoned, would result in race wars of the
magnitude that occurred in Haiti.14
With the French sale of all of the Louisiana Territory, the population in the
American-acquired territory grew rapidly. In Missouri alone, the population increased by
over one hundred percent between 1803 and 1810, with the number of blacks growing from
1,320 in 1803 to 3,618 in 1810.15 Burke explains that Americans from the Upper South
poured into the Missouri Territory just following the War of 1812 to enjoy the “fertile and
extensive bottomlands of the Missouri River and its tributaries and the adjacent undulating
prairie lands.”16 These natural attractions brought to Missouri many Southern transplants,
who envisioned greater economic and political opportunity than what they had experienced
13
Kremer and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage.
14
Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988).
15
Ibid.
Diane M. Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Houses, 1815-1865 (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2010).
16
15
in the South. Thus, the period just following statehood to just before the outbreak of the
Civil War (1821-1860), distinguishes a time when Missouri experienced an extraordinary
influx of settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia.17 These uprooted
white Southerners were not the wealthy plantation owners of the Deep South. Rather, many
Missouri migrants came from the backcountry areas of the Upper South and sought Missouri
for its proximity and similarities to their home state, as well as for the availability of cheap
land.18 These transplants created a society and culture in Missouri that was deeply
influenced by their experiences in the South, one that was dependent upon the use of black
slave labor.
Slavery in Missouri was characterized by small-slaveholding and not the large,
plantation-style slavery of the Deep South, which led some to allege that Missouri slaves
were happy and docile.19 The one exception to this was Little Dixie, an area that spanned
seventeen counties in the north central part of Missouri and reflected the culture and
economy of the Deep South, including the plantation system. Yet in all other parts of
Missouri, slavery differed significantly from that of the southern plantation.20 Missouri was
a region of small farms, small slave holdings, and relatively few slaves.21 Seventy percent of
Missouri’s slaveholders owned fewer than five slaves, and the slaves were responsible for
general fieldwork or house labor. Slaves typically helped clear land, worked as deck and
17
Russel Gerlach, Settlement Patterns in Missouri: A Study of Population Origins (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1986).
18
Burke, On Slavery’s Border.
19
Kremer and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage.
20
Burke, On Slavery’s Border.
21
Harrison Trexler, Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1914).
16
cabin boys on riverboats, labored in lead mines, and worked about towns and cities. Slaves
in Missouri were indeed jacks-of-all trades.22 In some cases, it was not uncommon for the
owner and his family to work alongside the slaves in the field.23 As such, Missouri’s small
slaveholdings made for a so-called domestic form of slavery, whereby the work routines
mirrored life on the farm and not on the plantation. Slaves and owners on most Missouri
farms resided in close quarters, which further perpetuated the image of the Missouri slaveowner as paternalistic.24 But as Burke asserts, “[i]n Missouri, as elsewhere, slavery is
slavery.”25 In fact, the small slaveholdings of Missouri often resulted in harsher treatment
than that experienced by slaves on plantations, in that the intimate living and working
conditions between slave and owner in Missouri often meant violent, emotionally-charged
interactions between the two.
Harriet Frazier, in her book, Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865, documents
incidents of heinous crimes committed against black slaves in Missouri during what she
terms a “slavocracy,” a time characterized as “rule by slave owners.”26 In reality, the
circumstances of small-scale slavery existed on a continuum of treatment.27 Whether in the
Deep South or Upper South, slavery was a system of labor exploitation and social and racial
control in which the slave owner held ultimate power over the slave.
Lorenzo Greene, Antonio Holland, and Gary Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History, 17901970 (St. Louis: Von Hoffman Press, 1973).
22
23
William E. Parrish, Charles T. Jones, Jr., and Lawrence O. Christensen, Missouri: The Heart of the
Nation (Wheeling, WV: Harlan Davidson, 2012).
24
Kremer and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage.
25
Burke, On Slavery’s Border, 143.
26
Frazier, Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 22.
27
Ibid., 145.
17
Not all black Missourians were slaves. A small percentage of the African American
population was free. In 1860, Missouri had 3,572 free blacks compared to 114,931 slaves.28
Most free blacks lived in cities, with over half living in St. Louis.29 But life for a free black
resident in antebellum Missouri was unquestionably far from comfortable. White
Missourians did not look upon free blacks favorably, often viewing them as troublemakers
who set a bad example for their slaves as representatives of freedom for enslaved black
Missourians. As such, free blacks were confronted with many and varied restrictions and
found their civil rights greatly limited: They could not testify against whites in court, had no
rights of habeas corpus, could not hold public meetings unless in the presence of at least one
white person, could not have any kind of weapon or ammunition without special permission,
and did not have the right to vote or hold public office.30 Indeed, a systematic suppression of
free blacks kept them in their place.
Widespread paranoia among whites with regard to both free and enslaved blacks
existed, which consisted of the fear that an uprising like the one that occurred in Haiti might
occur at any moment. Such anxiety led white Missourians to enact a law in 1817 that made
it illegal for blacks to assemble. Moreover, in 1835 the General Assembly cited its
constitutional authority to prevent “free Negroes” and “mulattoes” from coming to and
settling in Missouri, thus sanctioning a law that required free blacks to obtain a license from
the county court by posting a bond just in case the resident became a menace to society.31
28
Parrish, Jones, Jr., and Christensen, Missouri: The Heart of the Nation.
29
Greene, Holland, and Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History.
30
Parrish, Jones, Jr., and Christensen, Missouri: The Heart of the Nation.
31
Greene, Holland, and Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History.
18
Additionally, slave patrols were utilized to prevent riots and unlawful assemblies by slaves;
in practice, they were vigilante committees that terrorized blacks.
Despite all of the obstacles, some free blacks found success in Missouri. There were
river stewards, engineers, firefighters, servants, barbers, ministers, and even propertyowners. Free blacks were particularly concerned with the spiritual and educational welfare
of their community. As Trotter, Jr. notes, “[a]s African Americans confronted racial hostility
in the antebellum city, they increased their institution-building activities.”32 Not
surprisingly, whites resisted both independent black churches and black schools and
subsequently used their institutional influence and power to deny such opportunities.
Education for blacks prior to the Civil War was a rarity all over the country, but in
antebellum Missouri, in particular, education for blacks was rife with obstacles.
African American Schooling in Antebellum Missouri
In 1915, Carter Woodson, the so-called “father of black history” published A History
of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the Beginning of Slavery to
the Civil War, a seminal piece on the origins of African American education in the United
States. In it he writes the following:
Brought from the African wilds to constitute the laboring class of a pioneering
society in the new world, the heathen slaves had to be trained to meet the needs of
their new environment … The questions, however, as to exactly what kind of
training these Negros should have, and how far it should go, were to the white race
then as much a matter of perplexity as they are now.33
32
Trotter, The African American Experience, 221.
Carter A. Woodson, A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States from the
Beginning of Slavery to the Civil War (New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 1915), 1.
33
19
According to Woodson, by 1835, Southern slaveholders had determined that “[t]he more
you cultivate the minds of slaves, the more unserviceable you make them.”34 As the
plantation system grew in the Deep South, slaveholders decided that education would unfit
slaves for a life of servitude, and the fear that knowledge would incite insurrection among
African slaves was growing more widespread.35 Yet despite the collective effort to prevent
the education of slaves during the antebellum period, both free and enslaved blacks
recognized the importance of education and found ways to educate themselves. The struggle
for schooling during enslavement, according to David Freedman, offers insight into the
values and beliefs of black communities prior to 1861.36 Literacy was equated with freedom,
both political and economic, and represents the value that African American communities
placed on education in light of threats and impending punishment.37
The majority of Missouri slaves were not educated, as Missouri slaveholders, like
those in the Deep South, aimed to keep their slaves in ignorance so as not to rouse an
uprising:38
Down to 1860, the farm house [sic], the rural neighborhood, and the rural church
were by all means the most important educational forces in the lives of most
Americans. They were almost the only educational forces in the lives of black
Americans…The educated Negro was a rarity. The more usual sight was the entirely
untutored and ignorant Negro or the Negro who had used his native ability to take
advantage of the only learning available to him, the learning of the plantation, the
34
Ibid., 9.
35
Ibid.
36
David Freedman, “African American Schooling in the South prior to 1861,” The Journal of Negro
History 84, no. 1 (1999): 1-47.
37
Ibid.
Donnie Bellamy, “The Education of Blacks in Missouri prior to 1861,” The Journal of Negro History 59,
no. 2 (1974): 143-157.
38
20
completely extra-curricular, omnipresent education that is within arm’s length of a
man awake to life around him.”39
Even so, some black Missourians did receive an education and substantial degree of literacy.
In April of 1818, prior to statehood, John Mason Peck, a white Baptist Missionary, opened a
Sunday school for the instruction of black children and adults. The school supposedly began
with an enrollment of fourteen but quickly grew to one hundred, most of them slaves who
had permission from their masters to enroll. Peck’s school served as the nucleus for the
creation of the black Baptist church in St. Louis that was organized around 1827.40 Peck was
a powerful advocate for the education of blacks and whites, which he regarded as equipment
for the tasks of life.41 White churches were largely responsible for efforts to educate black
Missourians during the antebellum period, especially the Catholic Church. Efforts among
Missouri Catholics to educate blacks began in the 1830s, but in 1847 the General
Assembly’s enactment of the anti-education bill made it illegal to educate blacks in
Missouri. This certainly hampered efforts to educate free and enslaved blacks, but the law’s
threat of a fine or possible imprisonment did not convince everyone to abandon their efforts
to educate Missouri’s African American population, especially the black churches.
Former slave and Missourian, Reverend John Berry Meachum, minister of the first
African American Baptist Church in Missouri, was a vocal proponent of education for
blacks.42 Meachum’s St. Louis church housed Peck’s school in the basement, as the church
C. A. Arrowood, “The Education of American Plantation Slaves,” School and Society 5, no. 3 (1941):
377-378.
39
40
Brigham, “Negro Education in Ante Bellum Missouri,” 405-420.
Rufus Babcock, ed., Forty Years of Pioneer Life: Memoir of John Mason Peck (Carbondale: University
of Southern Illinois Press, 1965).
41
42
John Meachum, An Address to All of the Colored Citizens of the United States (Philadelphia: King and
Baird, 1846).
21
was infused with a deep spirit of education. It was through unity that Meachum envisioned
the growth of education for African Americans:
When this union of sentiment, feeling, and affection is formed and established
among us, we can by the organization of societies, the erection of schools and
establishment of colleges, institutions and seminaries of learning, soon arrive to the
same scale of being which those considered our superiors have attained … Shall we
not, I then ask, attain this end—ought we not? Surely none will say, Nay. Then let us
be united.43
By 1860, there were five black churches in St. Louis that housed educational programs,
despite the anti-education bill, enacted for the purpose of eliminating such institutions.
These churches would disguise their schools as Sunday Schools and teach both free and
enslaved blacks.44 The church became the center of the black community in Missouri, as it
did elsewhere. It was more than a place of worship; the church was a place to go without
suffering and humiliation. Beyond education, the church provided social cohesion and
sponsored festivals, protest meetings, and conventions.45
Those willing to teach African Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, both black
and white, were confronted with the possibility of imprisonment or fine if caught.
Meachum’s basement school was closed by law enforcement and resulted in the arrest of
one of its white teachers, which was not an uncommon occurrence. But Meachum’s efforts
were not dampened.46 Knowing that legally there was no jurisdiction over the Mississippi
River waters, Meachum cleverly built a schoolhouse aboard a steamboat in order to sidestep
43
Ibid., 13.
44
Bellamy, “The Education of Blacks in Missouri prior to 1861.”
45
Greene, Holland, and Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History.
46
Helen Baldwin, et al., Heritage of St. Louis (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Schools, 1964).
22
the law.47 Indeed, Missouri’s black population, both free and slave, did share in the
educational experience of antebellum Missouri, though only in a limited capacity. Education
of African Americans during this time required a certain courage and commitment, as well
as ingenuity that limited the scope and availability of educational opportunities for black
Missourians. Additionally, the mindset of Southern whites, the notion that educating African
Americans was dangerous, ensured that education for blacks in antebellum Missouri and
beyond remained narrow. However, civil war and subsequent emancipation would bring, at
the least, the prospect of greater educational opportunity for Missouri’s African Americans.
A City Developed
Missouri incorporated the City of Kansas on March 28, 1853, more than thirty years
after the state joined the union.48 With a population of roughly 2,500 in the 1820s, the small
fur-trading post was well behind St. Louis, which could boast of roughly 4,000 residents and
served as a booming commercial center for Missourians in the early nineteenth century.49
The area that comprises present-day Kansas City was viewed by many in the early
nineteenth century as simply an unremarkable part of the Great American Desert, hostile
and uninhabitable. In 1819, Stephen H. Long was commissioned by the United States Army
to assess the value of the land just west of the Missouri river. His official report declared the
following: “In regard to the extensive section of the country, we do not hesitate in giving the
opinion that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation and, of course, uninhabitable by a
47
Ibid.
George Green, A Condensed History of the Kansas City Area, Its Mayors and VIPs (Kansas City, MO:
Lowell Press, 1968).
48
Diane M. Burke and John Herron, Kansas City, America’s Crossroads: Essays from the Missouri
Historical Review, 1906-2006 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007).
49
23
people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.”50 With certainty that the territory
was of little value, the United States Government was even content to remove the American
Indians to the Kansas City area. It was not until a Frenchman, Francois Chouteau [whose
family established St. Louis in 1764] squatted on the land and established a fur trading post
in 1821 that white Europeans saw a reason to settle in the area.51 Chouteau and several
dozen French families formed the beginning of a first white settlement, Kawsmouth, a
successful central trading post that resulted in the area’s first church, Chouteau’s Church.
The area would remain mostly French until American settlers started arriving in 1828.
Americans came en masse, including Joseph Smith and John Calvin McCoy, after a land
office was opened following the Osage tribe ceding rights to their land.52
In the early 1830s, Joseph Smith and the Mormons envisioned a city located in the
center of the continent called Zion. They began to buy land in Jackson County around 1832
and to arrive shortly thereafter, even establishing the first school in Jackson County near
Troost Lake.53 Yet not long after their arrival, angry locals forced them out. They fled across
the Missouri River and eventually eastward before turning west and settling in Salt Lake
City.
Isaac McCoy, John Calvin McCoy’s Baptist missionary father, set up a mission in
the northernmost portion of what is today Johnson County and resettled there with his
Henry C. Haskell, Jr. and Richard B. Fowler, City of the Future: A Narrative History of Kansas City,
1850-1950 (Kansas City, MO: Frank Glenn Publishing, 1950).
50
51
Rick Montgomery and Shirl Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City
Star Books, 1999).
52
Ibid.
Theodore A. Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, A History of Kansas City, Missouri (Boulder: Pruett Publishing
Company, 1978); Haskell and Fowler, City of the Future.
53
24
family.54 Interested in profiting from westward trade, John Calvin McCoy saw an
opportunity in the area that the French and Mormons left behind and in 1833 opened a store
along a road that eventually led to Santa Fe. He called it West Port.55 By1845, Westport
Landing was indeed connected with the Santa Fe Trail and booming with blacksmith shops,
wagon factories, and supply houses of all kinds56 and by 1857 was home to a permanent
population of two thousand.57 John C. McCoy would later be among the historic fourteen
who in 1838 purchased plots of land for just over four thousand dollars, land that would
become the Town of Kansas, a municipality in 1850, and a city in 1853.58
The City of Kansas, which was shortened by nearly everyone to Kansas City soon
after its inception and referenced henceforth as such, was home to fewer than five hundred
residents in 1855, but by 1857 that number had grown to over three thousand and by 1859
had reached more than seven thousand.59 Much of the growth can be attributed to the
opening of Kansas Territory in 1854 and the hope of a transcontinental railroad linking cities
such as St. Louis and Kansas City to the West. But Kansas City’s growth at the end of the
1850s was severely hampered by the financial panic of 1857, as well as by the growing
hostility between Kansans and Missourians. Not surprisingly, the newly incorporated
Kansas City was swept into the divisiveness of the prewar period and the issue of slavery.
54
James Shortridge, Kansas City and How it Grew, 1822-2011 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2012).
55
Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story.
56
Haskell, Jr. and Fowler, City of the Future.
57
Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
58
Brown and Dorsett, A History of Kansas City, Missouri.
59
Ibid.
25
Soon after its formation, Kansas City found itself in the center of the slavery dispute.
With the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, literally boatloads of anti-slavery Northerners and
pro-slavery Southerners came pouring into the region.60 Most Kansas Citians believed they
had a right to own slaves, though slavery in Kansas City mirrored that of the state; it was
small in scale and largely consisted of domestics and helpers. By 1860, Jackson County held
3,944 slaves, though the size of the slave population never reached that of St. Louis.61
Beginning in 1855, Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers terrorized residents of Kansas City. As a
result, newspapers were suspended, business houses closed, and the population decreased by
nearly half, as many citizens left the city for quieter surroundings.62 Even trade was diverted
from Kansas City and instead was sent through Leavenworth. While the Battle of Westport
ended the Confederate threat in the West, it would not be until well after the war that Kansas
City would experience a revival. It came in the form of a steam train.
Dirty, ugly, and smelly, Kansas City in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War
looked as though it would barely survive. Leavenworth and St. Joseph were both more
populated than Kansas City in the late 1860s, and Atchison looked to surpass it as well.
“Kansas City,” it was written during that time in the Western Journal of Commerce, “is by
the laws of God and physical geography the great commercial depot of the plains…and
nothing but a disruption of nature can stay her destiny.”63 Such optimism gave way to reality
in 1869 when the Hannibal Bridge opened, which crossed the Missouri River and allowed
60
Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story.
Charles Coulter, “Take Up The Black Man’s Burden”: Kansas City’s African American Communities
1865-1939 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).
61
62
Theo Case, History of Kansas City Missouri (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason and Company, 1888).
63
Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story, 68.
26
the train great access to the West. The Hannibal Bridge was the gateway between the
Northeast and the Southwest.64 As a result, Kansas City’s population boomed as investors
arrived en masse, and the period between 1869 and 1890 was one of tremendous growth. In
1865, Kansas City’s population totaled 4,000, and in 1870, it reached 32,000.65 By 1880,
Kansas City, Missouri, was the nation’s twenty-fourth largest city with a population of
132,716, and if Kansas-side residents were added to the overall population, Kansas City
would have ranked as the nation’s eighteenth largest city.66 Similarly, Kansas City’s black
population increased from 190 in 1860 to 3,770 in 1870—by 1880 it reached 8,000, nearly
ten percent of the total population.67 Clearly, the post-war period signified new beginnings
for both Missouri and Kansas City, including the creation of a formal system of public
education.
Missouri’s Dual School System
Prior to 1865, the state of Missouri had seen fit to prohibit the education of the slave.
Although an educated slave was potentially more efficient, it was reasoned by the white
slave-owning class that an educated slave was also more dangerous. Training and education
might aid in revolt. The Emancipation Act of 1865, passed on Tuesday, January 11, 1865,
abolished slavery and included the following language: “hereafter in this State there shall be
neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted; and all persons held to service or labor as slaves, are hereby
64
Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
65
Montgomery and Kasper, Kansas City: An American Story.
66
Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
67
Coulter, “Take Up The Black Man’s Burden.”
27
‘declared free.’”68 With the declaration of freedom came a new state constitution, as well,
which was ratified the same year, 1865, and provided for the establishment and maintenance
of free public schools for all persons in the state between the ages of five and twenty-one.69
As stated in Article IX of the Emancipation Act of 1865, “all funds for the support of the
public schools should be appropriated in proportion to the number of children without regard
to color.” Yet the rule of law was in advance of the people, as at the beginning of this
period, popular opinion regarding free public schools in general and “Negro schools” in
particular, was not favorable.70 As such, public schooling in Missouri was slow to gain
popularity, which can be seen in Lucien Carr’s unpleasant characterization of the early
public school in Missouri:
Perhaps owing also in some degree to the sparseness of population and to a feeling of
prejudice which still lingered in certain quarters against the use of schools that were
wrongly called ‘free’ the cause of public education was anything but a flourishing
condition. In some portions of the State, especially in the remote and thinly
populated districts, schoolhouses were necessarily few and far apart; and in those
regions where they were more common they were often nothing more than log huts,
unplastered and unceiled, with chimneys constructed of sticks, mud, and straw, and
without school furniture, unless long, backless benches, made of inverted puncheons,
and wide planks fastened to walls for writing desks, can be called furniture. Rude
and unsuitable as these buildings would now be considered, they were all that could
then be afforded, and not unfrequently [sic], it is to be feared, they were in keeping
with the qualifications of the teachers and the elementary character of the instruction
given.… Indeed when regarded from this point of view, it must be confessed that
Missouri, despite the positive injunctions of her constitution to the contrary, had
done but a little to forward the cause of popular education.71
68
Nathan Parker, Missouri as It Is in 1867: An Illustrated Historical Gazetteer of Missouri (Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1867), 424.
Henry S. Williams, “The Development of the Negro Public School System in Missouri,” The Journal of
Negro History 5, no. 2 (1920): 137-165.
69
70
Ibid.
71
Lucien Carr, Missouri: A Bone of Contention (New York: Houghton & Mifflin, 1888), 237-238.
28
There is no doubt that Missourians were uncertain of the new system of public schooling
that had been established, in part a result of the old paupers’ schools reserved for the poor,
but they also remained skeptical, if not fearful, of providing an education to black children.
Ultimately, the legislature made it the duty of the school boards in each respective
township in Missouri to establish one or more separate schools for African American youth,
provided the number of black children exceeded twenty, which was changed in 1869 to
fifteen and in 1929 to eight:72
The Township Boards of Education in this State in their respective townships, and
the several other Boards of Education, and the trustees and directors or other officers
having authority in the premises in each city or incorporated village, shall be, and
they are hereby, authorized and required to establish within their respective
jurisdictions one or more separate schools for colored children, when the whole
number, by enumeration, exceeds twenty.73
As part of the new law, it was stated that if the monthly average attendance dropped below
twelve—changed in 1869 to ten and in 1893 to eight—for any given month, the school
could face closure for a period of up to six months.74 Resistance to educating African
Americans followed, and many communities found ways around the law, despite J. Milton
Turner’s report on the condition of black education in 1869, which suggested that the
general disposition of the community in Missouri was favorable to the education of black
children when compared to other former slave-holding states.75 Turner spent seven months
travelling about and covered an estimated eight to ten thousand miles on his journey. By
Sherman W. Savage, “The Legal Provisions for Negro Schools in Missouri from 1865-1890,” The
Journal of Negro History 16, no. 3 (1931): 309-321.
72
73
Twenty-Fourth General Assembly, Section 20, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box 303.
74
Williams, “The Development of the Negro Public School System in Missouri.”
Lawrence O. Christensen, “Schools for Blacks: J. Milton Turner in Reconstruction of Missouri,”
Missouri Historical Review 36, no. 2 (1982): 121-135.
75
29
1870, the Commissioner of Education reported that Missouri had more schools for black
children than any other former slave state. Indeed, Missouri did establish schools for black
children at a faster rate than most of the states in the Deep South. Yet the reality of public
schooling in Missouri for black children was not good. In 1872 it was estimated that there
were over 37,000 black children of school age in Missouri; of those, roughly 4,500 were
attending school.76 The discouraging number of black students in attendance in Missouri
public schools was a result, in large part, of a failure in enumeration and an unwillingness
among enumerators to accurately count the number of black school-aged children, thus
depriving large numbers of black children of education. Such was the case in Missouri’s
Pettis County, where the enumerator falsified the number of black school-aged pupils,
cutting the number in half from over twenty to ten so as to ensure that the board would not
have to provide a separate school for the black children of the county.77 Eventually, the
Pettis situation came before the State Court of Appeals, which ruled that the enumeration
had indeed been falsified, but many instances of a similar nature went on without recourse.
In Article IX, Section 2 of the Missouri State Constitution of 1865, it was stated that
separate schools “may” be established in Missouri: “Separate schools may be established for
students of African descent. All funds provided for the support of public schools shall be
appropriated in proportion of children without regard to color.”78 Thus the original law left
open the possibility that white and black children “may” attend the same school. In 1870 the
State Superintendent in the General Assembly, in referencing a particular situation in which
76
Savage, “The Legal Provisions for Negro Schools in Missouri.”
77
Ibid.
Missouri State Constitution, Article IX, Section 2, 12, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
78
30
a separate school did not exist in a remote county of Missouri, stated that “the principle of
admission to any public school be recognized according to the first article of the
Constitution,” thereby leaving “the adjustment of the principle to the majority of the
people.”79 Just three years later, in the Twenty-Seventh General Assembly, 1873, the State
Superintendent said the following:
One of the present insuperable difficulties attends all attempts to develop the colored
children of the State. About half of them are so widely scattered that it is impossible
to collect them in sufficient number to warrant the expense of a school. The colored
people themselves are forcing a question upon us which sooner or later must be
faced: that is, whether the two or three little dark faces isolated in any subdistrict
may slip into some corner of the white school. This question has in several instances
been brought to me for decision…The official opinion I have given is, that the law
contemplates separate schools, and whether colored children shall be admitted to
white school is a question which confronts prejudice, and appeals to benevolence
more than to law. I commend this subject to the calm and reflective sense of the
people.80
The issue was soon to become a matter of law. The sentiment of the state had transformed
by 1875, and so too had the governing body. In 1874 the Democratic Party gained control of
the state legislature and almost immediately called a constitutional convention.81
Consequently, the language of the state constitution regarding the establishment of separate
black schools was changed from “may” to “shall,” a seemingly minor adjustment but with
major implications.
Article XI, Section 3 of the Missouri State Constitution of 1875 reads, “Separate free
public schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent.”82 It
79
Twenty-Fifth General Assembly (1870), 37.
80
Twenty-Seventh General Assembly (1873), 45.
81
Williams, “The Development of the Negro Public School System in Missouri.”
Missouri State Constitution of 1875, Article XI, Section 3, 54, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
82
31
appears that the harsher language implicit in the word “shall” as opposed to “may” was the
white response to a rural population of black pupils who were being deprived entirely of an
education, not least a separate education. Black rural parents began to question why their
children, too few in number to necessitate a separate school in the state of Missouri, could
not enter the white schools. After all, prior to 1875, constitutional law did not explicitly
forbid a black pupil from enrolling in a white school. As a result, some rural black children
did enter white schools, but such a tactic was short-lived as legal justification for doing so
was removed with Article XI, Section 3.
With the new law, the office of the County Superintendent was abolished and each
district became independent. Moreover, it became the State Superintendent’s duty to ensure
separate schools statewide, and school officials who refused to comply could be fined:
The new law, like the old, is very stringent in the requirement of school directors to
establish colored schools where in any district the number of children exceeds
fifteen, or where the whole enumeration in the township reaches that number … For
failure to provide suitable accommodations for the colored children, school directors
may be subjected to a fine … in case of such failure, the law gives the State
Superintendent the full power of local boards to levy tax, build school houses and
perform any other duty necessary.83
Despite threat of a fine, in 1876 schools for African American children, “in many places,”
had not been established, causing complaints of ignorance of the law and willful
disobedience regarding education of black pupils.84 The greatest difficulty was faced in the
rural areas of the state, locations that the State Superintendent commented in 1874 were “not
favored with modern conveniences for the speedy transmission of news, and where it is
Twenty-Eighth General Assembly (1875), XI, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box 303.
83
84
Williams, “The Development of the Negro Public School System in Missouri,” 142.
32
humorously said the people are still voting for General Jackson.”85 Hardly a humorous
situation, many rural black students well into the twentieth century were attending
inadequate one-room schools.86
By 1889 it was unlawful in the public schools of Missouri for “any colored child to
attend a white school or any white child to attend a colored school.”87 Thus, after 1889 there
was a law in place making it a crime for black and white children to attend the same school,
and the mandate was most certainly enforced by school officials. One such example is the
case of Unionville, a rural area in the north central part of Missouri. In 1910, Attorney
General Major was informed that some of the local black children were being permitted to
attend the white public school. Upon hearing the news, Attorney General Major directed the
County Superintendent to revoke the license of any teacher who permitted the practice of
teaching both black and white children in the same school and ordered the Superintendent of
Unionville Schools to immediately refuse admittance to black children.88 The black rural
population of Missouri continued to face difficulties in school access well into the twentieth
century, despite a law passed in 1907 allowing for a consolidated school in areas with less
than twenty-five black children and a 1909 law that made it possible for a black child to
attend any black school in the county at the home-district’s expense.89 Despite alleged
Superintendent to the Public Schools, of the State of Missouri to the Adjourned Twenty-Seventh General
Assembly (1874), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
85
Seventy-Fifth Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools, of the State of Missouri (1924), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 304.
86
87
Law of 1889, Revised Statutes (1889), 1861, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box 303.
88
Kansas City Star, January 23, 1910, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
Forty-Third General Assembly (1907); Forty-Fifth General Assembly (1909), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 304.
89
33
efforts to improve the rural school experience for black children in Missouri at the turn of
the century, the quality of education was undeniably bad—so bad, in fact, the State
Superintendent addressed the matter in the Sixty-fifth General Assembly:
It should be reasonably apparent now that the state of Missouri has entered into a full
participation with its rural districts to meet some of their needs, and that these serious
problems will be faced fairly and solved jointly … A considerable portion of the
state has a laboring population eminently fitted to the task by nature and training,
happy in their surroundings and easily contended when wisely dealt with. These
people are negroes and most people are glad to have their help in working their farms
… In many places their just needs are met, but some shortsighted people are driving
these people to towns in order to educate their children. Their conditions in the towns
is often deplored but no one can blame them for a desire to attend to their children’s
needs. A wiser policy in providing schools and teachers for them would have much
to do in keeping them on the farms where they are happy and useful.90
While the State Superintendent’s reasoning was obviously flawed—African Americans were
not treated well in rural Missouri nor were they “happy” to be there—he was right in the fact
that black Missourians were leaving the rural areas for the cities in the late 19th century,
many of them travelling to Kansas City seeking greater opportunity.
Black Enclaves and Growth of Kansas City’s African American Population
Kansas City was, by most accounts, an unattractive town well into the late nineteenth
century and early twentieth century, at least until the City Beautiful Movement was
completed in 1915. But as late as 1908, Henry Holt had described Kansas City as busy,
smoky, and an unsuitable place in which to live.91 An intricate system of over two thousand
park acres and twenty-six miles of boulevards, which was the most elegant demonstration of
City Beautiful design in the country at the time, transformed the unsightly city but also
Sixty-Fifth Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools, of the State of Missouri (1914), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 304.
90
91
Henry Holt, “A Foreign Tour at Home.” Putnam’s Monthly and the Reader 3 (1908): 154-161.
34
began to reconfigure black residential patterns.92 Not surprisingly, only some enjoyed the
beautification of Kansas City, as the unskilled laborers, many of whom were African
American, resided in areas that remained dirty, ugly, and unsanitary, despite efforts to
improve the aesthetic beauty of the city. In fact, opportunities for African Americans to
escape areas of high poverty or so-called slums or racial enclaves actually decreased in the
early twentieth century as lines of segregation hardened.
The African American population in Kansas City grew from just shy of two hundred
individuals in 1860 to nearly fourteen thousand by 1890, and between 1880 and 1890, in
particular, the black population grew by almost seventy percent.93 The overall population
growth of Kansas City during the housing boom of the 1880s was impressive, expanding
from just fewer than fifty-six thousand residents in 1880 to over one hundred and thirty
thousand residents in 1890.94 Kansas City experienced rapid expansion of office buildings
and houses, roughly four thousand per year.95 In the late nineteenth century, in the absence
of zoning laws, building codes, city planning, and subdivision and building regulations, the
neighborhoods of Kansas City were race- and class-mixed, with cheap tenements erected
next to mansions.96 While the rich were not keen on the arrangement, in many instances the
wealthy viewed it as necessary. After all, it was important for servants to live in proximity to
Sherry L. Schirmer, A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960 (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 2002); Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
92
93
Kevin Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).
94
95
96
Ibid.
Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew, 1822-2011.
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
35
their employers’ estates.97 Despite the relatively even distribution of the black population
across Kansas City neighborhood wards, several enclaves of black settlement did emerge
near the turn of the century.
As many blacks left rural Missouri and settled in Kansas City, many of them ended
up in Hell’s Half Acre, Church Hill, Belvidere Hollow, or Vine Street Corridor, all of which
were home to noticeable concentrations of the black population. Evidenced by its name, life
in Hell’s Half Acre, located in the West Bottoms, was unforgiving. Thirty-three percent of
the population was black, and nearly all were poor and longed to escape.98 Church Hill was
the cultural core of Kansas City’s black community in the 1880s and was home to nearly
four hundred black residents, fifteen percent of the enclave’s population.99 Church Hill was
east of downtown and bounded by Eighth and Twelfth Streets, Holmes and Troost and
named for two prestigious black churches in the area, Allen Chapel A.M.E. and Second
Baptist.100 Church Hill was also home to Lincoln School, which was established at Eleventh
and Campbell in 1869.101 Indeed, Church Hill was a step up from Hell’s Half Acre and was
home to a considerable number of domestics who worked in the adjacent mansions of
McGee’s Addition. Belvidere Hollows, or simply The Hollows, developed northeast of
Church Hill and was also a mixed community with African Americans comprising thirtyeight percent of the 4,531 residents.102 As was the case with Hell’s Half Acre and Church
97
Schirmer, A City Divided.
98
Ibid; Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
99
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
100
Schirmer, A City Divided; Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
101
Shortridge, Kansas City and How It Grew.
102
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
36
Hill, the majority of Belvidere Hollows’ black occupants were semi-skilled or unskilled
laborers.
Vine Street Corridor or Lincoln-Coles District, located east of Church Hill and south
of Belvidere Hollow, in contrast to the other enclaves, afforded its residents, including black
residents, more spacious homes in the aftermath of the housing collapse in the 1890s.103
What was true of all of the aforementioned enclaves, and all housing and residential patterns
in general, at least in the late nineteenth century Kansas City, was an absence of residential
segregation. Blacks were not separate from whites in housing, though the same cannot be
said of schooling. A firm dual system began in Kansas City with the creation of its first
public schools in 1867.
103
Ibid.
37
CHAPTER 3
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI’S, DUAL SYSTEM AND
GROWTH OF PUBLIC SCHOOLING, 1867-1942
Kansas City, Missouri’s, First Black Public Schools, 1867-1920
Kansas City’s first black public school, the Lincoln School, was originally opened as
a privately funded Sabbath elementary school around 1865, before becoming part of the
Kansas City School District in 1867, the district’s inaugural year.1 The black Sabbath
schools typically operated during evenings and weekends and served as an educational
system of, by, and for African Americans.2 Certainly, Sabbath schools enjoyed much
popularity in the antebellum and immediate postbellum period; the Lincoln School is but
one example of this. The Sabbath School for African Americans was first established in the
Second Congregational Church at Tenth and McGee Streets, the same church that housed
the Lincoln School.3 The school board rented the basement of the building from the trustees
of the Second Congregational Church.4 Thus, with two hundred and fifty enumerated
school-aged black children, one teacher, Mrs. M. J. Copeland, was appointed but resigned
Carmen Jones, “Lincoln First Schools for Blacks in Kansas City,” Kansas City Star, 2000, Missouri
Valley Special Collections, Vertical File, Lincoln.
1
2
Marvin Aaron, “The Higher Education of African Americans in Kansas City, Missouri: A History of
Lincoln Junior College” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1999).
3
Jones, “Lincoln First Schools for Blacks in Kansas City.”
4
Aaron, “The Higher Education of African Americans in Kansas City, Missouri.”
38
on September 24 before the school year had even begun.5 James Dallas Browser, who was
reportedly the head of a private mission primary school in 1865, became the school’s and
city’s first black teacher of the newly acquired district school.6
Attendance among Kansas City’s black youth was initially spotty. Because it was the
city’s only black school, students were required to find their own way to and from school,
regardless of their place of residence. In 1873, there were over four hundred black children
of school age in Kansas City, and the average attendance was a dismal 165.7 Fifty-seven
percent of eligible white children were enrolled in the Kansas City Public Schools in 1877,
while only forty-seven percent of black school-aged children were enrolled.8 Browser
suggested that the distances that black students had to travel, especially in rainy or cold
weather, accounted for the considerable absenteeism.9 Bowser was most certainly correct.
By 1885, black enrollment had increased to nearly sixty-four percent, a result of newly
constructed black schools in Kansas City.10 Throughout the late nineteenth century, the
Kansas City Public Schools constructed many new schools to support their growing dual
system, and among them were many all-black elementary schools: Cherry Street School
(1883), Douglass School (1886), Page School (1890) Attucks School (1893), Bruce School
W. R. Howell, “The Colored Schools of Kansas City, Missouri.” Your Kansas City, State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 302.
5
“The Spirit of Freedom: A Profile of the History of Blacks in Kansas City, Missouri,” Office of Housing
and Community Development (1978), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 301.
6
7
Williams, “The Development of the Negro Public School System in Missouri.”
8
Earl Martin, Our Negro Population: A Sociological Study of the Negroes of Kansas City (Kansas City:
Franklin Hudson, 1913).
9
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools (1876-1877), Missouri Valley Special Collections.
Timothy L. Smith, “Native Blacks and Foreign Whites: Varying Responses to Educational Opportunities
in America, 1860-1950,” Perspectives in American History 6 (1972): 304-310.
10
39
(1898), and Penn School (1899).11 It was in the late nineteenth century, as well, that Kansas
City opened its first black high school, Lincoln High School.
In January 1882, a high school course of study was introduced into the Lincoln
School as a department within the elementary building. David Victor Augustus Nero,
principal of the Lincoln School, had campaigned hard for an African American high school
in Kansas City and gave the following rationale for its beginning:
The greatest good derived from the public schools of our country, [sic] is their
influence upon the character of the pupil. The cultivation of will-power begun in the
common school, and of such vital importance to the moral condition of each
individual, is carried on more effectively in the high school, for the pupil has reached
a greater maturity of mind, and can be led to see the necessity of the power of self –
control, and greater opportunities for the exercise of such power are hereby extended
to him.12
Nero, however, would not be afforded the opportunity to see his vision in practice. Amidst
controversy, Nero was transferred to Sumner High School in Kansas and was succeeded at
Lincoln by Samuel Robinson Bailey. Under Bailey’s leadership, Lincoln survived its
experimental phase and was formally created as a stand-alone high school in 1890, existing
in a building connected to the elementary before moving to Nineteenth and Tracy in 1908
and eventually Twenty-first and Woodland in 1936.13
Lincoln High School served as a defining feature of the African American
community from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. As Kansas
City’s preeminent black high school, Lincoln was staffed with a superbly qualified faculty
and administration, teachers and principals of tremendous quality, many of whom were
11
Howell, “The Colored Schools of Kansas City, Missouri.”
Tenth Annual Report of the Kansas City Public Schools, Kansas City, Missouri (1880-1881), 82-83,
Missouri Valley Special Collections.
12
13
Phillip O’Connor, “Finding a Solution to Lincoln’s Future,” Kansas City Star, 11 March 1999, 10.
40
overqualified for their positions. A Kansas City Star article made note of the impressive
progress of Lincoln in a 1915 article: “Lincoln High School is becoming the center of the
interests of the negro communities under the influence and work of J. R. E. Lee, principal of
the school. He was sixteen years a professor in Tuskegee Institute under the late Booker T.
Washington.”14 This was not only true of Lincoln High School, as the quality of education
and educator was high across all of Kansas City’s black schools. But this is not to suggest
that Kansas City’s black students received an equal education; they did not.
Earl Martin noted in 1913 that, as of the end of the year in 1911, Kansas City’s black
schools were valued at just over four hundred and fifty thousand dollars and white schools,
close to six million dollars.15 Such discrepancies can be seen in the upkeep and maintenance
of the district buildings as well. Of the nearly two million dollars expended for maintenance
of district school buildings, just over one hundred thousand dollars was spent on the black
schools. By 1918, there were eight African American elementary schools and one high
school in Kansas City, and by 1920, Lincoln High School was overcrowded and lacked
equipment. Among some of the most egregious complaints included classes being held in
stairwells, many teachers without desks; no gymnasium or library; and leaky gas lines to the
stove of the Domestic Science Department classroom, which required windows to be open at
all times.16 Despite public recognition of the deplorable conditions at Lincoln beginning in
1920, it would take fifteen years before Lincoln High School would have a new home.
14
303.
Kansas City Star, 26 December 1915, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box
15
Martin, Our Negro Population, 171.
16
Coulter, “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden.”
41
Vanessa Siddle Walker, though recognizing the inequalities of segregated schools,
identifies four common themes among black schools that made them particularly strong:
exemplary, dedicated, and demanding teachers; a rich curriculum and active extracurricular
program; an involved parental and community support system whose members served as
advocates; and an involved and active principal—a true leader. It is what she calls
institutional caring. In her review of the research on segregated schooling, Siddle Walker
concludes that the depiction of African American schooling as “unilaterally inferior” is
misleading: “What emerges in these accounts is a particular kind of schooling born of the
struggles associated with inequality, but nevertheless associated with successful schooling
practices in the minds of constituents and on some limited objective criteria.”17
According to James Anderson, the African American community’s commitment to
their schools and the education of black youth is a result of the push during the postbellum
period of ex-slaves who had been denied such opportunities prior to the Civil War.18 Black
schools, like black churches, served as the backbone of the community. They were gathering
places where community members would often come together to exchange ideas and
concerns.19 But despite the successes of schools like Lincoln High School in Kansas City,
they were a byproduct of an unequal system, a system that relegated African Americans to a
secondary status.
17
Vanessa Siddle Walker, “Valued Segregated Schools for African American Children in the South, 19351969: A Review of Common Themes and Characteristics,” Review of Educational Research 70, no. 3: 235285, 277.
James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1988).
18
19
Coulter, “Take Up the Black Man’s Burden.”
42
By the early 1900s, segregation had become entrenched in the social fabric of
Missouri, despite the fact that Missouri, unlike Jim Crow states of the Deep South, did not
create ordinances of separation other than those that applied to the public school.20 Missouri,
in fact, was one of only three former slaveholding states—Delaware and West Virginia
being the others—that did not adopt Jim Crow.21 Yet in Missouri complete segregation was
the custom, and it was widely enforced.22 The turn of the century brought with it a certain
vigor among whites to portray African Americans as not only inferior but evil, which can be
seen in a number of popular books published in the first decade of the twentieth century.23
Most certainly, beginning in the early 1900s, a concerted effort among whites in Kansas
City was undertaken to reduce blacks to a secondary status; a tightening of segregation and
erosion of social gains was occurring.24 After 1900, Kansas City’s black workers were
losing hold on occupations once open to them. Most labor unions in skilled trades refused
blacks, whereas before 1900 contractors might have been willing to hire blacks at lower
wages than whites. The growth of collective bargaining between contractors and labor
unions after 1900 resulted in the exclusion of skilled black laborers.25 By 1907, Kansas
20
Greene, Holland, and Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History.
Thomas Baker, “Human Rights in Missouri: The Legislative, Judicial, and Administrative Development
of Black Liberties” (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1975).
21
“Local Jim Crowism,” Kansas City Sun, 12 April 1919, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
22
See the following: Charles Carroll, The Negro Is a Beast (St. Louis: American Book and Bible House,
1900); Thomas Dixon, Jr., The Leopard Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden (New York: Doubleday,
Page, & Co., 1902), and Thomas Dixon, Jr., The Clansman; An Historical Romance of the KKK (New York:
Grossett & Dunlap, 1905); Robert W. Shufeldt, The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization (Boston:
Gorham Press, 1907).
23
“Meager Accommodations for Negro Theater Goers,” Rising Son, 30 October 1903, State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
24
“Passing of Negro Servants,” Rising Son, 3 May 1906, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
25
43
City’s African Americans were experiencing firsthand the cruelties of segregation: black
teachers who had associated freely together at teachers’ meetings were assigned to
segregated areas of the auditorium; blacks could not rent public halls for meetings and
public events; blacks could not secure places to bury their dead; black physicians were being
denied clinics at Kansas City hospitals; and residential segregation was becoming rigid,
including the emergence of congested black slums characterized by poorly constructed,
unsanitary houses divided into two or three apartments, often without sewers, and a high
percentage of sickness and disease.26
Kansas City, Missouri, by the early 1900s was fast becoming a divided city, aided in
part by a growing school district educating black and white children in separate schools.
Public education, by the turn of the century, had grown tremendously in popularity among
Kansas City’s black and white populations. Though originally viewed as elitist and
unnecessary, secondary schooling, in particular, had enjoyed ever-increasing acceptance by
the early 1900s. Perhaps there is no better example of the growth and popularity of Kansas
City’s schools, in particular its high schools, than the city’s first secondary school, the
Central School.
The Formation of All-white Central High School, 1867-1893
“Here’s to dear old Central High,
For her we’ll live, for her we’ll die,
We’ll always love the white and blue,
And to old Central e’er be true.”
—Harold Slaughter, 1912
Rising Son, 22 January 1904; 2 March 1907; “Negroes Want Old Hospital,” 19 October 1907; 29 June
1907; “Divided We Fall,” Kansas City Star, 3 July 1925, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
26
44
All-white Central School or Kansas City High School [later called Central High
School] opened with a total of four students and only one employee, J. B. Bradley, who
served as both principal and teacher for a handsome salary of $133 per month, plus three
dollars extra for sweeping out the classrooms.27 The first high school teacher to be hired was
in 1869, when E. R. Weeks, a seventeen year-old girl wrapped in a green woolen shawl
arrived at the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s Board of Education office for her
interview. Her skills were rigorously tested. Mrs. Weeks was required to locate capitals,
identify the bones of the body, recount the uses of the transitive verb, solve a radical
equation, and explain the origins of America. Though there were initial concerns about her
age, Mrs. Weeks impressed enough to get the job at the high school and so began the growth
of the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s secondary schools and the rapid development
of the city’s first high school, Central High School.28
The school was originally opened in the basement of the Starke Building on the
corner of Eleventh and Locust, which served as the Board of Education and office of the
Superintendent of Schools as well.29 There was not a public school building in 1867 and
little money for public education in general. Conditions were less than ideal; in many cases,
classes were held in unoccupied storerooms. The only accessible stairwell at the old Starke
building was attached to the outside and exposed to the elements, a shaky flight of wooden
steps sloping at a steep angle.30 This, however, did not hinder the school’s popularity and
27
Central Luminary, 26 May 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
28
Central Luminary, 12 February 1925, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
Kansas City Star, 9 October 1938, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public Central High.
History, Early.
29
30
Bingham, “Alumni Article,” Central Luminary, January 1906, 9, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
45
rapid growth, despite opposition among many who opposed the idea of a high school
altogether. The “pullbacks,” as they were known, objected to the high school, as they
claimed it pampered young, impressionable youth and emphasized foolish ideas about the
need for higher education, an education they alleged fell on poor tax payers but benefited
only rich people’s children. The criticism was so widespread, in fact, that the school board,
upon Central’s founding, left the word “high” out of the school’s name, instead naming it
the Central School.31
Central, however, was always a high school and was referenced as the Kansas City
High School by the Board of Education, despite the reluctance among some to refer to it as
such. While the first graduating class, honored in 1873, consisted of only five students: four
girls and one boy.32 The number quickly grew; Central graduated more students than any
other high school in the United States in 1898, with a graduating class of 250.33 Among the
first high schools to be opened west of the Mississippi, the Kansas City High School would
become one of the nation’s finest.
In the beginning, Central offered courses in Latin and Greek, as well as German,
French, Arithmetic, English, astronomy, mental and moral science, the derivation of words,
and natural philosophy, and literary societies were all the rage. One student recounted his
first literary program and the apprehension that accompanied such an honor:
I was elected into a Literary Society. Proud, of course. It was a great honor. I held up
my head. From that time on I was more of a man. It gave me a great start in school
life. The first day that I was to appear before the society on the literary program, was
31
Kansas City Star, 9 October 1938, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public Central High
History, Early.
“Kansas City’s First High School, Central at 11th and Locust Was Opened in 1867.” Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Vertical (Old) Files.
32
33
Central Luminary, May 1898, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
46
a memorable one. I was very nervous, and though the committee had assigned a
reading to me, nothing could be easier, but I was terrified. I thought each member of
the society a cruel and careful critic. At last my name was called. I arose and read,
my voice trembled, my head shook, but I read.34
In addition to coursework and literary societies, Principal J. B. Bradley emphasized the
importance of hygiene, beginning each day lining up students to inspect the cleanliness of
their hands, and upon dismissal, he was known to watch the students until out of sight so as
to ensure the boys and girls remained separated, for walking with the opposite sex was
strictly forbidden.35 Reverend W. G. Pratt, a Baptist minister turned principal who was
known to prod his horse with a nail-tipped stick from his farm in Independence Avenue to
school, succeeded Bradley. But Pratt was recognized for more than his mistreatment of his
horse; he was widely recognized for his talent in Latin, gaining acclaim from universities
nationwide for Central’s students’ preparation and training in Latin.36
Growth in the Central School’s student body necessitated more space soon after it
was opened. Thus, on June 9, 1868, a small lot at the southeast corner of Eleventh and
Locust in downtown Kansas City measuring 240 by 132 square feet was purchased for
$5,882.37 The Washington School at Eighth and Cherry opened in April of 1868 and was the
first Kansas City public school erected, but the city’s first high school was built shortly
thereafter, consisting of a two-story brick building of two rooms. This facility underwent
greater expansion in 1872 and served as the high school until 1875, when a one-story frame
building of three rooms was erected just south of it. The two buildings were connected by a
34
Central Luminary, October 1893, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
Kansas City Star, 8 May 1938, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public Central High
History, Early.
35
36
Ibid.
37
Central Luminary, 26 May 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
47
passageway, the so-called “rope walk,” which served as a thoroughfare that allowed students
to access both buildings.38
Twelve year-old Rollins Bingham, a small, self-described tow-headed boy, entered
the city’s only high school as part of the freshman class in 1873. In 1906, Bingham
chronicled his remembrances of his days as a student at the high school, a time when gas
lighting illuminated rooms, the telephone was yet to be known, mules hauled streetcars, and
the phonograph and typewriter were future inventions. Yet, Bingham lovingly recalled his
days in the “sturdy, plain, wooden-tailed brick” high school: “Whether ‘Central High’ was
the official designation of the school in 1873 I do not know, but I do know that the pupils
then never used the name, ‘Central’.”39 Bingham explains that as the only high school,
Central was referred to at the time as simply “The High School,” a designation that most
certainly signifies the fact that it was the city’s only high school option but also indicates the
high esteem the school was afforded—“[t]o those below it was in truth and in fact most
high, so high as to seem almost inaccessible.”40
The high school was indeed inaccessible to many but especially to African
American, school-aged children. In 1873, African American students were still not afforded
a high school option and would not be until the creation of Lincoln High School in 1888.
Meanwhile, white students, such as Rollins Bingham, saw dreams realized as they donned
long trousers, well brushed clothes, and perpetual collar and cravat as they found themselves
among the high school elite.41
38
Ibid.
39
Bingham, “Alumni Article,” Central Luminary, January 1906, 9.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid.
48
The number of whites seeking to be among the high school select continued to grow
over the course of the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, and by 1875 the
additional space created by the1872 additions would no longer suffice. Central was growing,
and so too was the district—the combined white and black enrollment increased from a total
enrollment of 2,150 in 1867 to 8,144 in 1875.42 Subsequently, Central’s frame building,
built just a few years before, was torn down, and the original brick building was enlarged to
accommodate nine additional rooms; but in 1884 a brand new three-story brick structure was
constructed to accommodate five hundred students. The new facility had wide halls and five
classrooms on the first and second floors, in addition to an assembly room that adorned the
top floor.43 Yet by 1889, the newly constructed building, built to house five hundred
students, had to meet the needs of over seven hundred.44 Student numbers were growing so
fast that the total enrollment jumped by fifty-seven students between December of 1889 and
February of 1890.45 While Central’s numbers were particularly impressive, the district as a
whole experienced continued growth throughout the last two decades of the nineteenth
century. This posed a problem for district leaders, who were confronted with an almost
constant need for new buildings and building additions. The district, however, benefited
from a supportive constituency willing to carry the burden, as shown in the continued
support of tax levies:
The fine equipment of the public schools, the buildings, the apparatus, the plentiful
provision for doing all that schools are called to do represents a great expenditure of
the peoples’ monies and shows that the people are willing always to bear the burden,
42
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1867-1947, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
43
Central Luminary, 24 May 1985, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
44
Central Luminary, December 1898, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
45
Central Luminary, December 1898; February 1890, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
49
to pay the taxes if they are satisfied that the end sought is good and the expenditure
therefore honestly made. There is no holding back, no grudging in regard to the
support of the public schools of Kansas City.46
Year after year, tax levies for the purchase of ground and erection of buildings found favor
among the voters in impressive fashion: for example, in the April 1887 election, 6,472 votes
were cast for the levy and a mere 197 against it.47
Central High School was among the district’s schools that benefited from the
generous taxpayers. In April of 1892, district voters approved a one hundred thousand dollar
initiative for a new high school facility.48 Meanwhile, in October, just following district
approval for a new high school, a four-story addition was completed, which added eight
rooms; yet additional quarters were needed to serve the swelling population of students.
Students eagerly awaited the completion of the new building, anticipating that the new high
school would result in greater educational opportunity, as is evidenced by one student’s
comments in 1893:
The High School pupil of future years will have a much more pleasant time than
does he of the present. A beautiful school building, well-equipped with every
appliance for the best work, situated on a broad, well paved thoroughfare; opposite, a
handsome park, a breathing place and a recreation ground. All these and many more
will contribute to his happiness and to his soul’s elevation. But will he be stronger,
mentally, than those of the present and the past? We hope and believe so.49
Dreams became a reality when the new building was finished in December of 1893, a threestory building with a basement and large assembly hall. The new high school was complete
with a revolving copper-domed observatory atop the southwest corner and a 140-foot tower
46
“The Opening of the Schools,” Kansas City Star, 16 December 1895, 4.
Ella Wiberg, “The History of the Development of Public Education in Kansas City, Missouri” (Master’s
thesis, 1925).
47
48
Central Luminary, 24 May 1985, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
49
Central Luminary, November 1893, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
50
adorning the front.50 The assembly hall seated two thousand, and it had excellent facilities
for the natural sciences—it was most certainly an ornament and credit to the city.51
Down at Eleventh and Locust: Central High School, 1893-1915
Just two years after the new building was constructed, School Board President
Robert Yeager claimed: “We think we can say without fear of successful contradiction that
there is no high school in the country superior to the Kansas City High School.”52 There was
unquestionably an atmosphere of confidence that accompanied attendance at Central High
School that seemingly was carried forward by generations of students. Such pride led one
student to write the following in a Central Luminary editorial:
[E]very year in the history of Central High School adds something to its already
brilliant record, every year brings forth achievements and accomplishments which
make for her unsurpassed reputation. We of the present Central should congratulate
ourselves upon our good fortune, for we have received a richer inheritance than any
other class…does it not make you proud that the best of all high schools is your
own?53
A sense of privilege can be seen routinely in the early years of the school newspaper,
the Central Luminary. The pride that Central students took in their school was not
unsubstantiated. Indeed, Central High School and her students had gained national
recognition by the late nineteenth century as one of the best high schools in the nation.
Central students were attending college in large numbers. In 1897, forty students were
headed to college, including one to Harvard, four to Princeton, and five to Yale.54 The
“Sunset Glow on Old Central High,” Kansas City Star, 31 August 1952, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public Central High History, Early.
50
51
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1894, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
52
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1895, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 18.
53
Central Luminary, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
54
Central Luminary, May 1897, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
51
publicity necessitated one student to playfully ask in 1894, “[W]hat’s the matter with
Central?” only to offer a quick rebuttal, “[F]rom the vast number of visiting teachers,
principals and departments that descend upon us every week we should judge that we are all
right. Why not have a reception committee.”55 Central was, in fact, welcoming educators
from around the country who were interested in seeing firsthand the course of study offered
at the high school. In February of 1897, Central received two visiting superintendents of
public schools in New York who claimed that Central High School was “one of the finest in
America.”56
The early success of Central seems to have been in large part a result of several
visionary and exemplary administrators, especially John T. Buchanan. It was under
Buchanan that Central grew from 567 to nearly two thousand. Beginning his tenure in the
nine-room building, Buchanan ended his principalship in the grand new building of 1893.
As a true testament to his successes and Central’s progress under his leadership, Buchanan
left Central to assume responsibilities as the Principal of the Boys’ Latin High School in
New York as appointed by the New York School Board.57 So impressed was New York by
Buchanan, that Dr. Murray Butler of Columbia University stated publicly in 1897, “[i]n Mr.
Buchanan New York gains for its schools and for its citizenship the man who is in my
judgment the best all-around public high school principal in the United States.”58
The growing demand for high school resulted in the creation of a second all-white
high school in 1897, The Manual Training High School. The new school was opened in
55
Central Luminary, March 1894, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
56
Central Luminary, February 1897, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
57
Centralian, 1934, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
58
“Dr. Butler of New York Pays Tribute to the Kansas City Educator,” Kansas City Star, 9 May 1897, 1.
52
September of 1897 and was welcomed by the Central administration. Conditions were so
crowded at Central that Principal Buchanan had sent a report to the Superintendent in 1896
suggesting that classes were “greatly in excess” of thirty students, as he claimed: “The new
Manual Training High School is coming just in the ‘nick of time.’”59 Thus, Manual would
serve to relieve the crowding at Central and was designed to provide a broad course of
instruction “for college or for the practical duties of life.”60 Manual was also to present
students with knowledge about certain trades but not to turn out skilled carpenters,
machinists, or dressmakers.61 Manual’s opening, however, did not harm Central’s
development, as Central continued to flourish in the end of the nineteenth century:
Indeed few schools furnish such splendid opportunities for individual development.
Our widely diversified course of study, our Thursday morning exercises, our society
programs and open sessions, and our contests all afford facilities equaled only by
schools and academies of much higher grade.62
The diversity of the course of study at Central included both United States history and art,
which were added to the curriculum in 1897 and 1899 respectively. Both courses were
somewhat forward-thinking, as the addition of United States history, especially, made
Central one of only a few in the country to offer such a course of study.63 Moreover, an
athletic association was formed in 1898, laying the foundation for organized sport in
football, baseball, and track for boys only and establishing a connection between good
59
“Central High School Report,” Kansas City Star, 11 December 1896, 2.
60
Central Luminary, December 1896, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
61
Central Luminary, September 1897, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
62
Central Luminary, May 1897, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
63
Central Luminary, September 1897, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
53
health and scholarship.64 Central was, as one student suggested at the turn of the century,
fast developing “all of the symptoms of a college.”65 Central, indeed, had gained a
reputation for producing “well instructed, reliable pupils, supplied with an extensive stock of
general information.”66
In 1908, the same year that Westport High School was opened, Central at Eleventh
and Locust underwent construction yet again. This time, a new wing on the east side was
added and the building was remodeled and connected, making a spacious sixty-two rooms.67
To the students’ delight, as part of the additional space, a basement gymnasium free of
columns and rods to interfere with basketball was added, along with additional classrooms
for art and business classes, as well as a dining hall:68
At last we are to have our new building….A new building! No more will you be able
to touch the top of the gym when you are jumping. No more will you be forced to
study art in half the necessary space. Let us trust that next year we may have a new
building, with more lockers for girls’ wraps, etc., more halls for our enthusiastic
floor walkers, more room for vocal aspirants, more breathing space for gymnastic
experts or otherwise more space for prospective artists.69
But the additions of 1908 would only suffice for so long, as the school and city continued to
grow.
The district had even employed a night school, which was under serious
consideration as early as 1906 to meet the needs of children who, despite the compulsory
64
Central Luminary, May 1898, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
65
Central Luminary, March 1899, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
66
Central Luminary, January 1901, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
Sam Ray. “A Postcard from Old Kansas City,” Kansas City Star, 11 May 1968, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Central (Old) Vertical File.
67
68
Kansas City Star, 12 December 1908, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Central (New) Vertical File.
69
L.W. Fifield, Central Luminary, December 1907, 25.
54
nature of education established in 1905, were employed during the day.70 By 1911, the night
school, which had been moved from Washington Ward School to Central High School
because of its large numbers, had exceeded two thousand students; this surpassed the
aspirations of even the most ardent supporters of night school.71 Thus the night school began
accommodating all students and offering courses in all of the commercial branches, manual
training, domestic science, elementary and higher mathematics, as well as additional
elementary subjects.72 In 1912, the Kansas City Times noted that four of Central’s
classrooms were not enough to hold the large numbers of students who desired to take
mechanical drawing, and in 1913 the enrollment had grown to over three thousand.73 By
1914, four additional night schools were added, including one for Mexican-Americans at
Adams and one for African Americans at Douglas.74 Indeed, the numbers were suggesting
that Kansas Citians were hungry for formal education and would take advantage of the
public schools in both conventional and unconventional ways.
Central, with an enrollment of 1,200, was soon to occupy a new plot of land in the
southeastern-most portion of the city—the southeastern corner of Linwood Boulevard and
Indiana Avenue.75 By 1911, Central, Westport, and Manual, the city’s white high schools,
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1905-1906, Missouri Valley Special Collections;
Kansas City Journal, 9 December 1906, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Night Schools.
70
Kansas City Times, 9 December 1911, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Night
Schools.
71
72
Ibid.
73
Kansas City Star, 28 October 1913; Kansas City Times, 15 October 1912, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Night Schools.
74
Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1913-1914, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
75
Kansas City Star, 11 November 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central
High.
55
were all enrolling record numbers.76 Lincoln High School, still the city’s only black high
school, was overcrowded as well, though judging by the media coverage at the time, was all
but an afterthought. Meanwhile, talk of new schools to accommodate the growing popularity
of public schooling was getting louder and calls for a new high school centered around an
area east of Troost and South of Eighteenth Street—the southeast district. It was reasoned
that Kansas City’s population was moving toward the southeast part of the city, which
necessitated a high school to house the increasing number of school-aged children.
In 1913, I.I. Cammack, former principal of Central High School turned
superintendent, requested eleven new schools and eight additions to existing schools.
Among the list of new schools was a new Central High School relocated to the southeast
district.77 So with bonds approved, the district initiated a massive plan that included both
brand new buildings and additions to old ones. Such an undertaking prompted a journalist to
ask in 1915, “[D]id you know that Kansas City had spent nearly 5 million dollars on your
little Johnnie and Susie in the last five years?”78 Central High School and all-white
Northeast High School were the two high schools where “Johnnie” and “Susie” would enjoy
new lavish surroundings.
New Building; Same Ol’ Central, 1915-1922
While many welcomed the idea of a new Central, students at Central High School
approached the news with hopeful skepticism:
The tidings have come from the Board of Education that Old Central is to live after
1913-1914 in a new habitation amidst new and happier surroundings. The incessant
76
“Rush to Enter High School,” Kansas City Star, 31 August 1911, 7.
77
“Asks for Eleven New Schools,” Kansas City Star, 8 June 1913, 2.
Kansas City Star, 12 September 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Buildings
New, 18.
78
56
demand for a trade school will then probably be satisfied, and our present building
will go for that purpose. What concerns us, however, is the removal of Central to
Linwood and Indiana. All her trophies, her traditions, and, we hope, her faculty, will
go with her. The name ‘Central’ has always stood for the best in high school
standards, and when she takes up her abode in what will be one of the finest high
school buildings in the West, with all the modern conveniences and advantages, to
what glories will she not rise?...Everything is propitious, and we predict a glorious
future for a school that has had a most glorious past.79
After roughly five hundred thousand dollars in expenditures, the new Central High School
that occupied the center of a tract of land at Linwood Boulevard and Indiana Avenue was
opened in 1915.80 The old building would become the Kansas City Polytechnic Institute and
Junior College, originally led by E. M. Bainter, former Principal of Central High School,
1911-1912 and appointed Commissioner of Education for Puerto Rico by President Taft,
1912-1915.81 The Polytechnic Institute and Junior College was an outgrowth of the teachertraining department founded at Central High School in 1911. The program would enjoy
steady growth and by 1931 became a four-year college awarding diplomas.82
Certainly as the reality of the move to the new building set in, nostalgic students
proclaimed their affinity for dear old Central: “Lo, though the walls are old and dirty, and
the stairways narrow and worn, we shall carry away the most cherished memories of old
Central High at Eleventh and Locust.”83 The nostalgia was soon washed away by the
79
Central Luminary, March 1913, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 27.
80
Kansas City Star, 11 November 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central
High.
81
“E. M. Bainter to Porto Rico,” Kansas City Star, 8 April 1912, 1.
In 1953, the old building at Eleventh and Locust was razed and used as a parking lot, later to become the
site of Kansas City’s Municipal Courts building in the early 1970s.
82
83
Central Luminary, March 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 6.
57
modernity and newness of the building in the southeastern part of the city. By December of
1915, memories of old Central were distant:
Did you ever stop to think of the care the school board has taken to insure our health
and comfort? Did you ever stop to think of the advantages we, the Central students,
have over the students of other schools? Let us pause a moment and think about
some of the comforts given us in our new building.84
Considering the extravagance of the new building, it is no wonder students were willing to
embrace their unfamiliar surroundings.
The impressive new building was fronted on Linwood Boulevard with a large
athletic field and six-lap track. Elevated behind the field was the rectangle-shaped four-story
school. The school itself was, as described by one journalist in 1915, “beautiful in simplicity
and suggestiveness.”85 Indeed, the building was somewhat factory-like in appearance, but its
amenities were far from pedestrian—it had a 1,432-seat ventilated and well-lit auditorium
with a large stage, dressing rooms, and a drop curtain; it had spacious restrooms, a matron’s
apartment with hospital furnishings, a laundry room, intercommunicating telephone system
with eighty-seven telephones, a large dining hall and kitchen, as well as a branch of the
public library. The gymnasium, too, was designed to impress, with a twenty-four-lap indoor
track in the balcony and enough room to accommodate indoor tennis matches, in addition to
a large swimming pool.86 With such lavishness, it is no surprise that in 1919, Central High
School at its new Southeast location led enrollment among the city’s high schools,
84
Central Luminary, December 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 29.
85
Kansas City Star, 11 November 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central
High.
86
Ibid.
58
outnumbering Manual Training School, Westport High School, Lincoln High School, and
Northeast High School.87
The new high school ushered in a new era. In particular, there appears to have been a
growing interest in sports during this time, especially basketball and football. While
organized athletics at Central began with the formation of the boy’s athletic association in
1894, interest among the community was hardly impressive.88 Sports seemingly assumed a
second-class citizenship, a backseat to the literary societies. But by the turn of the century, a
girl’s athletics association had been formed and there appears to have been a growing
interest, most generally, in the role of athletics at Central High School. Yet, academics and
society life still reigned supreme: “In a purely academic institution like the Central High
School such training is especially required to give wise relaxation, and to so maintain the
bodily health as to enable the student to use to the best advantage his intellectual
attainments.”89 Athletics, however, continued to gain gradual esteem, and with the beginning
of the principalship of H.H. Holmes in 1912, the athletic association had found an
enthusiastic advocate: “it is evident in our current principal,” one Central student noted, “we
have found a man who does not deem it beneath the dignity of a principal to get out and root
at a basketball game.”90 To be sure, sports did grow in popularity during Holmes’s tenure.
Football was reintroduced at Central and all of the Kansas City high schools after an elevenyear hiatus, a result of a Manual player fracturing his skull during a game in 1906. A
successful basketball team gained a widespread following, and track and baseball expanded
87
“A Large Senior Enrollment,” Kansas City Star, 2 December 1919, 6.
88
Central Luminary, April 1894, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
89
Central Luminary, March 1915, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 15.
90
Central Luminary, November 1912, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 20.
59
as well for boys, while girls continued to participate in club sports. Holmes was so
instrumental in growing athletics at Central, in fact, that upon his untimely death from
influenza in 1920, an athletic field was dedicated in his honor in 1922 just east of Central,
Holmes Athletic Field. It was the first of its kind in Kansas City.91
The first years at the new building, however, were not without challenges. World
War I resulted in changes in the course of study. The sewing classes devoted their efforts to
making Red Cross relief garments, and cooking classes, as a result of rationing, placed
emphasis on the use of cooking substitutes. German was even formally suspended in 1918 at
Central and all Kansas City, Missouri School District public schools following a vote by the
board. German had been under fire prior to the 1918 school year, as boys in 1917 who quit
German during the second semester of the school year to work on farms as a way of
promoting production and conservation were still given credit for the class.92 As if the war
effort were not enough, the flu epidemic caused major disruption in the lives of students and
teachers. As was the case across the district, Central High School closed its doors during the
fall period, and many would succumb to influenza, even claiming lives, Central’s principal,
H.H. Holmes among them.
The curriculum, too, was undergoing some unwelcomed changes. The ancient
language department came under attack, as Greek was dropped from Central High School’s
curriculum and Latin too faced the threat of termination: “It seems a pity that Central, after
running an ancient language department for years that could bring forth jealousy from many
91
Central Luminary, 19 January 1922, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
Kansas City Post, 17 May 1918, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, German
Language.
92
60
a college should allow these languages to drift away from it.”93 So while the classics were
under attack, the domestic science department was thriving, turning out “scores of
housekeepers every year.”94 Central was not the only school, however, that was undergoing
a shift from a classical education to a more vocational one. Lincoln High School was as
well. All of the Kansas City, Missouri School District public schools, in fact, were placing a
greater emphasis on the industrial arts, and pre-vocational and vocational schools grew in
popularity, a means of making the worker more efficient and preparing the student for the
workforce. Education was changing in light of the growing industrial sector, and the purpose
of education had shifted from one that educated a few in the classics to a system that
educated the masses for the occupations of a new industrial order.
Such changes in the curriculum were likely, in part, a result of the growing
popularity of the Gary system. The Gary system, which originated in Gary, Indiana, was led
by William A. Wirt and designed to mold the individual student’s cognitive and manual
training.95 While the Gary system was gaining favor across the country in the second decade
of the twentieth century, it was not without its critics. Kansas City did, in fact, open an
experimental Gary school as early as 1913, but it was subsequently transformed back into a
traditional ward school in 1917.96 The high school parents of Kansas City were particularly
troubled by the new system: “High school eligibility means more than the training for one
line of work, it means the open door to an infinite amount of productiveness. This is a city,
93
Central Luminary, February 1919, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
94
Ibid., 27.
Ronald Cohen and Raymond Mohl, The Paradox of Progressive Education: The Gary Plan and Urban
Schooling (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press Corp., 1979).
95
96
Kansas City Star, 28 April 1917, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Gary System.
61
not a town specializing on one line of labor, with children brought up to one destiny only, as
in Gary.”97 Although the Gary system in the schools of Kansas City, Missouri, only operated
on an experimental basis, most certainly, the curriculum, in the post war years, began to
move away from a classical education in favor of a more vocational one.
Despite the hardships that accompanied the inaugural years of the new building,
Central High School’s student population continued to grow. By 1920, Central graduated
270 students and in 1922 the number of graduates was up to 407.98 Growth was occurring so
fast, in fact, that half-day school sessions were employed. The morning session, as of 1921,
housed 1,582 students and the afternoon 821 for a total of 2403.99 While the two-session
approach was not ideal, it was necessary to accommodate the huge numbers. Students,
however, expressed their displeasure with the organization of the double session:
One of the evils existing in Central at the present time is the lack of proper
relationship between students. This is a well known fact do to the double session.
The students are not allowed to remain at school after they have finished their
classroom work and do not even get to see each other except during school hours.100
With enrollment having increased by two hundred students annually since the new
building was constructed in 1915, it had reached a critical juncture by 1922. Despite the
building of a fifty-thousand-dollar annex in 1921 adding eight classrooms and 182 lockers,
Central was growing too fast to accommodate the increasing population of students.
Overcrowding was not just a problem at Central, however, as many district schools were
facing similar issues. Both Westport and Lincoln High Schools were forced to build annexes
97
Kansas City Star, 25 January 1914, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Gary System.
“Central to Graduate 270,” Kansas City Star, 5 June 1920, 2; “Central to Graduate 407,” Kansas City
Star, 3 June 1922, 4.
98
99
Central Luminary, 4 March 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
100
Central Luminary, 24 March 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
62
as well.101 Yet, the growth at Central was particularly challenging, a result of the sheer
number of students—four thousand.102
In 1922, the tremendous growth in the Central attendance area resulted in the design
of two new junior highs, Central Junior High and Westport Junior High, as well as another
new high school, Paseo High School, to relieve the crowding at Central High School and
Westport High School. Central Junior High School was to be built just east of the high
school building, and the new junior high would be no slouch—it was designed with sixtyfive classrooms, two gymnasiums, swimming pool, and manual training shops.103 The junior
high school was necessary; the congestion at Central limited school activities and qualified
Central High School as one of the largest high schools in the country. Central exceeded
Westport High School’s enrollment by 971, Northeast High School by 1,263, and Manual
High School by 1,942.104 Lincoln High School experienced continued growth during this
period as well, and while an annex was added to Lincoln just as it was at Central, Lincoln
would not get a much-needed new building until 1936.105 It is clear that under Kansas City,
Missouri School District’s dual system, the white schools were a priority. But it was not
only in education that whites were enjoying great privilege; the housing boom in the
southeastern corridor where the new Central High School resided was exclusively white.
Large-scale building by investment companies catering to white families looking to find
101
Central Luminary, 22 September 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
102
Central Luminary, 21 1922, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
Kansas City Star, 14 December 1924, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Junior High,
Central.
103
104
Central Luminary, 12 November 1922, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
105
Phillip O’Connor, “Finding a Solution to Lincoln’s Future,” Kansas City Star, 11 March 1990, 10.
63
housing in the nearest open territory to town resulted in many families settling within
Central High School’s attendance zone, which can be seen in the rising numbers of Central
students. Thus, the southeastern part of Kansas City, the immediate area surrounding Central
High School, south of Twenty-Seventh Street, was fast-becoming an exclusively white
territory.
Growth in Kansas City’s Southeast Corridor, 1922-1929
Ninety houses a month were being built in the Central attendance area in 1921, and
for every six houses built, one new student entered Central, equaling about 180 per year.106
The area around Central was booming, in large part a result of available land that was
nearest to town. New businesses accompanied the growth of the area, many of them lining
the streets surrounding the new Central High School, and the growth of the area is evident
by the thriving commercial industry that sprang up around Central.107
The families that funneled into the neighborhoods surrounding Central High School
were exclusively white, yet the black population of Kansas City was increasing
tremendously as well. Between 1910 and 1930, the black population grew from 23,566 in
1910 to 38,754 in 1930, but the indices of black isolation increased as well, from roughly
twenty-one percent in 1910 to just over thirty percent in 1930, signifying a distinct
106
Central Luminary, 13 October 1921, Missouri Valley Special Collections.
By 1922, establishments included the following: Mann Bros Market (East Thirty-first), Just-rite
(Twenty-seventh and Prospect), Lucky’s Bakery (Twenty-sixth and Prospect), Japan Florist (Thirty-fourth and
Prospect), Wolfe’s Modern Dance Studio (Twenty-ninth and Brooklyn), T.A Linck Drug Company (Thirtyfirst and Prospect), Myerson Book Store (Thirty-first and Indiana), Indiana Cleaners and Tailors (Twentyeighth and Linwood), Kaifetz Delicatessen (East Thirty-first Street), Model Cleaners (Thirty-third and
Prospect), Justus Plumbing Company (East Thirty-first), KL Perkins Prescription Specialist (Thirty-first and
Indiana), Stamp Photos (Thirtieth and Prospect), TA Link Drug Company (Thirty-first and Prospect), Greens
School Supplies and Food (Thirty-first and Agnes), Southeast State Bank (Thirty-first and Prospect),
Mitchell’s Drugstore (Twenty-ninth and Prospect), K.L. Perkins Prescription Specialist (Thirty-first and
Indiana), Schneider Dry Goods Company (Thirty-first and Indiana), and Lott and Von Drug Store (Thirty-first
and Brooklyn) (Central Luminary, 1920-1922, Missouri Valley Special Collections).
107
64
separation of the residences of blacks from whites.108 Racial tension in Kansas City was on
the rise in the early 1920s, and much of it had to do with housing. An Anti-Ugly Movement
launched in 1922 and approved by the city council that same year preceded the first zoning
ordinance of Kansas City, which was enacted in 1923.109
Kansas Citians were growing increasingly concerned with their property values, and
as the black population’s numbers continued to swell, the black eastside neighborhoods
began to expand and press ever so close to the white eastside neighborhoods. The black
commercial center near Eighteenth and Vine, the Lincoln-Coles area, was most certainly
attractive to arriving black families, but it was crowded with an average of four and one-half
families per residence and plagued by increasing health and sanitation problems. Death rates
climbed and sickness spread.110 Thus, middle-class black families began seeking to relocate
out of the crowded black eastside and turned to realtors for assistance.
As Kansas City’s black population increased, white residents of the southeast side
began to associate the presence of blacks with declining property values and neighborhood
instability.111 Ambitious block-busting realtors capitalized on whites’ fears and blacks’
desire for more spacious homes. When neighborhood blocks on the eastside fringe were
“busted,” whites fled. But by 1926, improvement associations had been formed among white
Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the
Underclass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven
Development.
108
109
Schirmer, A City Divided.
“Divided We Fall,” Kansas City Call, 3 July 1925, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
110
111
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
65
residents on the eastside to restrict the sale of their homes to “Negroes.”112 In 1927, The
Linwood Association, an improvement association headquartered near Central High School,
held a meeting to discuss making the association national in scope. A reporter recounted the
events of the evening:
At the meeting which was sponsored by the Linwood Improvement Association steps
were taken toward the formation of a national protection association whose purpose
is to be to improve property of the members and protect it against encroachments.
The real purpose of the new organization, however, is the restriction of property
against sale, lease or rental to Negroes. Speakers at the meeting Friday night urged
the necessity of restriction against Negroes, asserting that property values would go
down if Negroes were allowed to buy there. Hence, the “protective association”
members of the organization in KC hope to make the association a national one “to
keep Negroes where they belong.”113
The struggle faced by black families looking to find adequate housing near or in white
residential neighborhoods during the 1920s was rife with struggle. The National Association
of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) founded in 1908 set out to convince whites that all-white
racially homogenous neighborhoods were “a superior atmosphere for residential life and a
requisite for protecting the homeowner’s investments.”114 Such a line of reasoning became
official policy by 1924 and was institutionalized with the publication of real estate
textbooks, the first of which surfaced in 1923 and stated: “Colored people must recognize
the economic disturbance which their presence in a white neighborhood causes and forego
their desire to split off from the established district where the rest of their race lives.”115
“Improvement Association Moves to Restrict against Colored Owners,” Kansas City Call, 24 December
1926, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 343.
112
113
“Linwood Association Takes Lead in National Association,” Kansas City Call, 29 July 1927, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 343.
114
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, 34.
Stanley McMichael and Robert Bingham, City Growth and Values (Cleveland: The Stanley McMichael
Publishing Organization, 1923).
115
66
Whites seemingly took heed of the warnings and began protecting the homogeneity of their
neighborhoods with fervor. Between 1921 and 1928, bombings of black-occupied homes
became commonplace, with seven bombings occurring within a single year.116 Lines were
being drawn, and where deed restrictions, homeowners’ associations, and scare tactics were
unsuccessful in keeping blacks out of white southeast-side neighborhoods, violence would
follow. Whites were becoming increasingly insistent on the homogeneity of their
neighborhoods, just as they always had been with their schools.
Meanwhile, Central High School continued to grow. Like the school, the white
neighborhoods surrounding Central were steadily expanding as well, safely south of
Twenty-Seventh Street, which in the 1920s came to represent the division between white
residential areas and black residential areas. In 1924, Central became the largest high school
in the state, not least the district, welcoming ninety-four new students from eleven different
states and averaging nearly forty students per classroom.117 Westport was the only other
high school that even came close to Central’s numbers, and it was nearly five hundred
students shy of Central’s mark.118 Such expansion led Otto F. Dubach, principal of Central,
to remark in 1925 that the greatest progress Central had made during his tenure was the
“tremendous increase in enrollment.”119 In Dubach’s five years as principal, from 1920 to
1925, Central had grown from 1,300 students to 2,400.120
116
Schirmer, A City Divided.
117
Central Luminary, 25 September 1924, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
118
Central Luminary, 18 September 1924, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
119
Central Luminary, 12 November 1925, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 4.
120
Ibid.
67
The new Central Junior High, targeted for a 1925 opening, would relieve some of the
crowding. It was to accommodate 1,500 and in 1924 was said to be the most modern school
in the city. The stand-alone junior high school, although beginning in controversy, had by
1924 gained widespread approval, as it was seen as most necessary to isolate the seventhgrade student from the child-like atmosphere of the grade school and the adult-like
atmosphere of the high school.121 The acceptance of the junior high concept and the
continued growth of the district led the school board in 1924 to begin plans for five new
secondary schools: three high schools and two junior high schools—Paseo High School at
Forty-Eighth Street and Paseo, East Side High School between Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Streets at Van Brunt, Southwest High School at Sixty-Fifth Street and Wornall, Northeast
Junior High School on Independence Avenue east of Van Brunt, and West Side Junior High
School with a location that had yet to be determined.122 This too was news welcomed by
Centralites, as the new Paseo High School would further relieve crowded conditions by
taking roughly five hundred Central students.
The period between 1913 and 1925 became known as the “Era of Construction,” as
thirty-nine Kansas City, Missouri School District school buildings were erected and
additions and equipment were added to forty-three buildings. Moreover, the schools of
Kansas City, Missouri, had increased at a rate of one room full of pupils each week in this
same twelve-year timeframe: “The schools of Kansas City,” Superintendent Cammack
announced in 1926, “are now on par with those of other American cities.”123 The prosperity
Kansas City Star, 15 December 1931, Missouri Valley Special Collections, School-Public, Junior High
Schools.
121
122
Central Luminary, 11 December 1924, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
123
Central Luminary, 28 January 1926, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
68
of the 1920s would be tested, however, as the depression that ushered in the 1930s would
also challenge the Kansas City, Missouri School District.
Financial Crisis and the Kansas City, Missouri School District, 1929-1942
Kansas Citians had supported schools in impressive fashion since their inception,
routinely supporting tax levies and bond initiatives that both contributed to and assisted with
the tremendous growth of the district and seemingly constant need for new buildings and
additions to existing ones. But toward the end of the 1920s, the district was facing cutbacks.
In 1928, automatic increases in teacher salaries were suspended, the bonus system was cut,
and necessary building maintenance and repair was restricted as well.124 The demands on the
Kansas City, Missouri School District had indeed become more far-reaching.
By 1930 Superintendent Melcher submitted an editorial to the Kansas City Star to
outline for taxpayers the changing responsibilities of the schools, an apparent attempt to
justify an increase in taxation. In the editorial, Melcher explained that the valuation of the
district had grown to twenty-seven million dollars, a far cry from the seven million dollar
valuation in 1915. Moreover, the number of pupils over the same time period, he explained,
had increased from 43,000 to 70,000, and the annual cost to run the schools had gone from
three million dollars to seven million dollars. He concluded with the following:
In spite of this increased expenditure, tax rates in Kansas City have not increased.
From 1914 to 1918 the tax rate was 12 mills; from 1919 to 1921 it was 13 mills; and
for the last five years it has been 11 ½ mills. This rate has yielded revenue sufficient,
when supplemented by state and federal funds, to meet the needs, including
retirement of bonds … The increase in enrollment, of course, increases the task
greatly, but there are also added duties from new kinds of services demanded…125
“Pay-as-you-go Plan,” Kansas City Star, 24 January 1928, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Revenue.
124
125
Kansas City Star, 3 January 1929, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Revenue.
69
The “new services” referenced by Melcher included the 1913 law requiring public schools to
supply free textbooks and the Smith-Hughes law of 1919, which placed greater emphasis on
vocational education, in addition to the dedication of a small portion of the budget for
special education classrooms, open air classrooms, a school for the deaf, a school for the socalled “crippled,” a teacher’s college, and a junior college. But the most costly undertaking
was the modernization of school buildings that occurred between 1912 and 1927, which
included the construction or improvement of roughly seventy buildings at a cost of
approximately fifteen million dollars. Only two of the buildings, however, were black
schools.126
There were 19,910 high school pupils in Kansas City, Missouri, as of 1932, and
district-wide daily attendance was 60,025, an increase of nearly fifteen thousand students in
ten years. Additionally, by 1930, Kansas City, Missouri School District’s course offerings
were expanding. Industrial arts courses for boys and home-making courses for girls became
more readily available, and fine arts courses, such as drawing, sketching, design, band,
orchestra, and piano were added.127 At Central, 1930 ushered in new high school
requirements whereby a student could choose one of two lines of study: getting ready for
living or getting ready for college.128 A student’s elective course selections were thus
determined by his or her future aspirations. Moreover, a comprehensive health and physical
education system had been supplied to the schools by the early 1930s, requiring school
126
Ibid.
Kansas City Service Bulletin, Executive Department of the Kansas City, Missouri Public Schools
(November 1932), Missouri Valley Special Collections, 14.
127
128
Central Luminary, 14 March 1930, 1.
70
nurses, gymnasiums, and playgrounds.129 In addition to all of this, the district had
incorporated special schools and a junior college while attempting to keep costs low.
There is complexity in attempting to cut costs while maintaining quality and
quantity, and the Kansas City, Missouri School District, in the 1930s, was confronted with
just such a dilemma—the unenviable task of trying to reduce expenditures but sustain high
standards for which it had become widely recognized. The district attempted to save money
by increasing class sizes, combining small schools, eliminating certain services, reducing the
number of supervisors, decreasing the quantity and quality of school supplies, postponing
repairs and improvements of property, and using reserve funds.130 But despite these efforts,
the district continued to face fiscal challenges. The cost to the district of educating Kansas
City’s school-aged population had increased by thirty-one percent in the ten years between
1922 and 1932, but the district was reducing costs:
The reduction made by the Board of Education of Kansas City, MO, in per pupil cost
and in the total cost of schools for the year 1932-1933 is relatively greater than the
reduction made by any other agency having taxing power over the property and
people of Kansas City or any other agency having spending power over the revenues
of Kansas City.131
By 1934, district expenditures were on average twenty percent less than what other
cities of comparable size were spending, and the tax rate for school purposes was
unimpressive as well. At nine mills, Kansas City, Missouri, ranked at the bottom in the state
with 262 other towns and cities having a higher levy rate than Missouri. When compared to
other cities of comparable size, the levy rate for school purposes in Kansas City, Missouri,
129
Kansas City Service Bulletin, 13.
130
Kansas City Service Bulletin (April 1939), 262.
131
Kansas City Service Bulletin (November 1932), 16.
71
was alarmingly low. Even Kansas City, Kansas schools were levying over twice as much—
twenty-two mills as compared to nine.132
Despite the district’s shortage in revenue, Centralites were dreaming of a new
gymnasium and cafeteria, and plans were drawn for a two-story extension. Such
improvements became a reality in 1938 when Central benefited from a federal government
authorized school improvement plan and got the eighty-five by fifty-one foot extension that
had been in the works since 1935.133 In addition to the Central Annex, during the second
half of the 1930s, a new all-black Lincoln High School was completed, and Southeast High
School was constructed, as was the R. J. DeLano School for “crippled” children located
across Linwood Boulevard from Central High School. The Kansas City, Missouri School
District was in fact a beneficiary of New Deal efforts and public works projects, in part a
result of “Boss Tom” Pendergast, chairman of the Jackson County Democratic Club, who
held significant local, state, and national political influence. Pendergast had given Franklin
Delano Roosevelt early support in his presidential bid, and FDR rewarded him with control
of virtually all federal relief expenditures in Missouri.134 Not surprisingly, Kansas City
benefited from the connection, as a disproportionate amount of relief money made its way
into the city.
Despite the fact that the Great Depression did not hit Kansas City as hard as many
other cities, the school district continued to find itself in the midst of financial struggle.135
The board recognized in 1935 that failure to reduce salaries would soon leave the school
132
Kansas City Service Bulletin (November 1935), 18.
133
Central Luminary, 5 November 1937, 1.
134
Schirmer, A City Divided.
135
Brown and Dorsett, A History of Kansas City, Missouri.
72
district insolvent.136 In 1936, teachers’ salaries, for the first time, were significantly reduced.
Cuts ranged from five to twelve percent depending on one’s salary and were implemented as
cost-saving measures. According to a survey by the University Women’s Club, part of an
educational project sponsored by the state department of education, the situation in Kansas
City had reached crisis proportions:
Something must be done to raise Kansas City from its low rank of eighteenth in a list
of twenty-one cities of comparable size in median salaries paid elementary class
room teachers and seventeenth in median salaries paid in high schools….This is a
matter not only for the board of education to consider but parents of every child in
the public schools….137
Most certainly, the fiscal problems confronted by district leaders throughout the 1930s
would create problems for many future years. Yet in the face of the financial obstacles, the
Kansas City, Missouri School District, Central High School included, continued to enjoy a
period of steady growth during the 1930s, as more and more students were entering the
Kansas City, Missouri School District.
In 1940, the Kansas City, Missouri School District had a new leader, Dr. H. C. Hunt,
and he, like his predecessor, was committed to emphasizing occupations in the schools.
Upon his appointment as superintendent of schools, Hunt promptly proposed an
occupational survey to aid the schools in readying graduates for the job market.138
Superintendent Hunt was clearly continuing a district-wide emphasis on vocational
education. At Central, a fourth year of shop work was added to the boys’ curriculum in
1941, an extension of metal work, woodwork and printing. In contrast, girls were given the
136
Kansas City Star, 15 May 1938, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public.
“Survey of Financial Situation in K.C. Schools,” Kansas City Star, 9 November 1938, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Schools-Public.
137
138
Central Luminary, 4 October 1940, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
73
option for an extra year of clothing, which began with the course, Beginning Homemaking,
which taught girls to be “diligent homemakers and intelligent consumers.”139 But the most
pressing issue in Hunt’s new role was the ongoing and worsening financial situation. By
1942, the Kansas City, Missouri School District confronted further cuts in maintenance and
building repairs, educational supplies, and teacher salaries. Moreover, students faced a
shortened school year, a six-month term, which would result in students having to extend
their schooling in order to meet requirements for graduation. Resolution of the crisis hinged
on a ten-mill tax levy, which required a vote every four years.140 Voters approved the levy
on March 31, 1942, and the schools, consequently were saved from pending financial ruin,
at least for the moment.141
By 1942, financial woes of the Kansas City, Missouri School District were
secondary. World War II and the war effort took its toll on the secondary schools of Kansas
City, Missouri. Air-raid drills were occurring with some frequency, pictures were taken
down as an air-raid precaution, a ban on typewriters made it impossible to purchase new
ones, and repairs of broken typewriters were difficult as well. Food substitutes were used in
cooking classes, food prices for school lunches had increased, and even fuel rationing and
oil quotas were having an impact.142 Individual schools were feeling the full weight of the
war as well. In January of 1943, Central High School suffered its first casualty of the war
when Wyatt Hundley, a Central student, was killed in action in the Southwest Pacific, and
139
Central Luminary, 6 February 1942, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 3.
140
Central Luminary, 20 March 1942, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
141
Central Luminary, 10 April 1942, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
Central Luminary, 25 September 1942; 2 October 1942; 16 October 1942; 6 November 1942, Missouri
Valley Special Collections.
142
74
Hundley would not be the last Centralian to lose his life. By 1944, 21 Central alums had
been killed in action.143 Many Central students hit the job market as well to help in the war
effort. Over the Christmas holiday in 1942, three hundred Central students were working.
With more and more students seeking outside employment, O. F. Dubach, principal of
Central High School, made the following declaration “to all Central students” in 1943:
If you must work and go to school next year, be sure to notify us early in August, so
that we can arrange your program properly. If you possibly can do so, complete your
education doing no more outside work than you can readily carry. At the same time,
try to make the kind of grades that society is now demanding for success. Our best
wishes to all of you for the summer. To those who enter the armed forces, may you
return safely to civilian life in the near future—to a world made secure for all time to
come and based on the four freedoms for which we are fighting today.”144
The war effort was clearly affecting the schools and the lives of students, but there were
larger societal implications of the war as well, especially for African Americans.
143
Central Luminary, 20 January 1943, 1; 1 December 1944, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
144
Central Luminary, 26 May 1943, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
75
CHAPTER 4
FROM SEGREGATION TO DESEGREGATION, 1942-1962
World War II and Hope for Equality, 1942-1948
A black American Corporal stated in 1945,
I spent four years in the Army to free a bunch of Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and I’m
hanged if I’m going to let the Alabama version of the German kick me around when
I get home. No sirree-bob! I went into the Army a nigger; I’m comin’ out a man.”1
Such sentiment can be seen among many in the African American community after World
War II, especially in brave black soldiers who put their lives on the line in the name of
freedom despite the injustices being confronted daily on the home front. In some ways the
seeds of civil unrest were planted in the 1930s, as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1910, began seriously challenging
the legally segregated South.2 One such dispute involved the University of Missouri and
Lloyd Gaines’s attempt to enter the university’s all-white law school. Missouri ex rel Gaines
v. Canada, heard before the Supreme Court, established that the state of Missouri could not
deny Gaines’s admission to law school because a separate all-black law school did not exist
at the time.3 Hence, Lincoln University’s law school was established, though Gaines never
attended. By all accounts, Lloyd Gaines disappeared into obscurity, but a legal precedent
1
James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1.
Stephen J. Caldas and Carl L. Bankston, III, Forced to Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation
(Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2005).
2
3
Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).
76
had been established, and the Gaines case in some respects paved the way for the Brown
decision of 1954.
Prior to outbreak of war, the Depression had disproportionately affected African
Americans across the nation, including Kansas City. In 1925, roughly twenty-five percent of
Kansas City’s black families were on welfare.4 Blacks during the years of the Depression
were the last to be hired and the first to be fired, as whites began to take so-called “nigger
jobs,” menial positions that they formerly would have disdained.5 Indeed, the New Deal
offered blacks some relief. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), in particular, employed
thousands of young black Kansas Citians and set them to work reforesting barren lands. The
federal programs, however, were most definitely limited in scope, and many African
Americans continued to languish in the sluggish economy of the pre-war period.
As the war machine kick-started the economy, unemployment rapidly declined from
just over eight million individuals in 1940 to roughly two and-one-half million in 1942.6 Not
surprisingly, the economic uptick that preceded war benefited whites greatly but left African
Americans out. War-related jobs were simply not available to blacks, as many were reserved
for whites only. The Executive Order 8802 banned employment discrimination because of
race, creed, color, or national origin for employers with defense contracts, labor unions, and
civilian agencies of the federal government. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
established an executive agency, the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), to
4
“The Spirit of Freedom.”
5
Greene, Holland, and Kremer, The Role of the Negro in Missouri History.
Andrew E. Kersten, “African Americans and World War II,” OAH Magazine of History 16, no. 3 (Spring,
2002), 13-17.
6
77
expose prejudice in war industries.7 There is some disagreement as to the effectiveness of
the agency. It employed a staff of only 128 to monitor all of the United States and operated
with a budget that started at a measly eighty thousand dollars, but it appears that the FEPC
did open some new opportunities for Blacks where there previously had been none.8
Nevertheless, the agency’s limited scope did not have a major impact on job bias in
American society. Yet under President Roosevelt’s executive order and with the help of
organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League, many blacks did find war
jobs, often well paying, which meant some African Americans could buy a better lifestyle
than they were able to before the war.9
Initially, the armed forces discouraged black enlistment, but the draft law passed in
September of 1940 contained an antidiscrimination clause, consequently opening the door
for many. Ultimately, more than one million black men and women entered various services,
and roughly one-half million of them served abroad in Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, and
Asia.10 Yet once in the service, blacks discovered that discrimination was widespread.
Blacks received inferior training and served in segregated units, and black troops were
disproportionately assigned to service units or menial work. In fact, the navy only accepted
blacks as mess attendants or stewards.11 But perhaps the most egregious example of the
racism so entrenched in society, as well as the armed forces, was the Red Cross’s
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
“The Spirit of Freedom.”
Michael L. Levine, African Americans and Civil Rights: From 1619 to Present (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx
Press, 1996).
10
11
Ibid.
78
segregation of a black individual’s blood from that of a white individual. In many respects,
World War II seemed a mere continuation of World War I for the black soldier, and as in
World War I, a spirit of disillusionment led to a wave of riots and violence, most notably the
1943 riot that unfolded in Detroit.12 Unlike World War I, however, World War II seemingly
marked an increasing awareness of enforced inequality among African Americans.
African Americans fought bravely in World War II but were forced to do so in
segregated units. In 1946, President Truman formed a group of distinguished black and
white citizens to serve on the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. The committee’s 1947
report, To Secure These Rights, called for extensive government action to ensure equal rights
and end segregation in schools, the military, public accommodations, and employment
practices.13 Later that same year, President Truman addressed a large crowd assembled for
the NAACP national convention and called for ending “insult, intimidation, violence, and
prejudice,” and called for defending the “rights and equalities of all Americans.”14 As part of
his ten-point, civil rights plan and Executive Order 9981, Truman in July of 1948 proceeded
to call for the desegregation of the armed forces, a mandate that provided for the first
racially integrated combat units in the Korean War.15 Moreover, President Truman’s
executive order supplied the foundation for ending state-imposed segregation in the civilian
sector.
12
Neil A. Wynn, “War and Racial Progress,” Peace & Change 20, no. 3 (July 1995): 348-364.
Jeffery A. Raffel, in School Desegregation in the 21st Century, eds. Christine Rossell, David Armor, and
Herbert Walberg (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 17-39.
13
14
Ibid., 22.
15
Caldas and Bankston, III, Forced to Fail.
79
World War II had aroused a spirit of change in Kansas City, as it had across the
nation, although the process was occurring at an exceedingly slow pace. In 1942, thirteen
thousand black Kansas Citians gathered at Municipal Auditorium to protest discriminatory
practices of the war, an action that contributed to the adoption of the Fair Employment
Practices Committee.16 Indeed, the protest did effect change, but by 1946, as war production
fell off, nearly all black employees had been laid off, and employment percentages had
reverted back to 1940 levels. Considering that there were nearly one million more black
workers in civilian jobs in 1944 than in 1940, the fact that the numbers had reverted back to
those of the pre-war years was sobering. An editorial in a 1946 issue of the Kansas City Call
asked, “Is Kansas City North or South?” only to follow up the rhetorical question with the
following:
In some matters, tax-paying for instance, Negroes are 100 per cent, full fledged
citizens. In other matters, housing for example, they are definitely second-or-third
class citizens. In still other matter such as eating and entertainment, Negroes do not
know where they stand. Sometimes they are treated as citizens and human beings
and at other times they are not welcome to a drink of water.17
Kansas City, Missouri, was an anomaly of sorts. Unlike cities of the Deep South, Kansas
City never did legally mandate Jim Crow laws, though custom most certainly positioned
African Americans in inferiority. Schools had been separate since they had been created in
1867, and separate was the standard in both the public and private sector. Yet, there was a
sense of hopeful optimism among Kansas City’s African American community in the
aftermath of World War II:
16
“The Spirit of Freedom.”
“Is Kansas City North or South,” Kansas City Call, 29 November 1946, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
17
80
Little by little since World War II, our growing city has thrown off the shackles
which have burdened its citizens of color for generations. First employment policies
at the City Hall were broadened and Negro applications were given an opportunity to
fill a greater variety of jobs. There is still much to be desired along this line, but the
first and hardest step has been taken.18
While World War II had seemingly ushered in a new era in the struggle for racial equality,
the housing industry was proving particularly difficult to penetrate.
Racial Homogeneity and Housing, 1948-1952
Adequate and fair housing had long been a struggle for Kansas City, Missouri’s,
black population. The 1940s, however, seemed to set the tone for later decades. By 1940,
J. C. Nichols had used deed restrictions with effectiveness since he had first put them into
practice in 1913 with the Mission Hills Homes Company.19 Nichols proceeded to build
dozens of racially restricted subdivisions for upper and middle-income whites, specifically
prohibiting all housing sales to blacks. Nichols also protected his residential developments
by implementing mandatory homeowner associations to enforce racial restrictions. Such an
organization created a base for maintaining neighborhood cohesion as a means of preventing
breaches of restrictive covenants.20 By 1940, ninety-four percent of the 41,574 total black
residents of Kansas City, Missouri, lived in the Lincoln-Coles community, but between 1940
and 1950, many blacks looked to escape its confines, in large part a result of inadequate
housing and the fact that fifty-seven percent of the rentals in the area lacked a private bath
and a toilet that flushed.21 Moreover, the influx of black workers to Kansas City during
18
“Another Step Nearer to Real Democracy,” Kansas City Call, 18 April 1952, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
William S. Worley, J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential
Communities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993).
19
20
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
21
“The Spirit of Freedom.”
81
World War II contributed to further crowding, and wartime wages and high employment
meant that some black families could afford better housing and began to look outside of the
established neighborhood jurisdictions. Thus racial tensions were heightened as whites
perceived such movement as a threat to their homogenous neighborhoods.
Shelley v. Kraemer signified a turning point, as the Supreme Court ruled that
explicitly racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable in court.22 Yet the damage had
been done, at least in the psyches of whites who had become convinced that a black
presence in a white neighborhood would lower the value of their homes. Shelley v. Kraemer
would be tested in Kansas City, Missouri, soon after the Supreme Court’s decision. A case
was filed that involved fourteen owners of eight properties on East Twenty-Ninth Street who
alleged the sale of property to a black family, Mr. and Mrs. Rueben S. Street, lowered the
value of their homes. As such, the aforementioned fourteen homeowners were seeking over
one hundred thousand dollars in damages from James Leaon and his former wife Erma
Leaon, the white family who sold their property to the Streets.23 The case, which eventually
made its way before the Missouri Supreme Court, was significant. The state Supreme Court
ruled that the Leaons could be sued for breach of contract, in effect suggesting that the
restrictive covenant was not enforceable against the Streets, but the Leaons could be sued for
breach of contract in selling the property to the Streets in violation of the restrictive
covenant: “under the facts of this case, we hold that according to the law as we now
understand it, the trial court may hear and determine an action for damages for the breach of
the restriction agreement in question between plaintiffs and defendants without violating any
22
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).
“Delay in Home Suit,” Kansas City Star, 14 June 1948, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 343.
23
82
provision of the federal or state constitutions.”24 Following the Missouri Supreme Court’s
ruling, Carl R. Johnson, president of the Kansas City, Missouri, NAACP, suggested that
whites would refuse to sell their homes to blacks out of fear of being sued by their
neighbors. Indeed, just days after Johnson’s comments, a white woman, Ms. Flinn, brought
suit against another white woman, Mrs. Clark, on the grounds that she was in breach of the
Santa Fe Place neighborhood agreement when she sold her property to a black family, Mr.
and Mrs. E. S. Dottrey.25 Violence and intimidation, too, continued as whites seemed to stop
at nothing in order to prevent blacks from ruining the homogeneity of their neighborhoods.
Further complicating the African American quest for fair housing was downtown
redevelopment or what was otherwise known as “black removal,” which destroyed blackowned small businesses and black residences and displaced blacks into crowded and
deteriorating housing.26 In 1948, the City Plan Commission recommended redevelopment.27
Spurred by the Housing Act of 1949, which provided federal financing for slum clearance
and urban renewal, Kansas City was, as were many American cities, swept into the
redevelopment fervor. It became clear soon after the passage of the Housing Act of 1949
that there were no houses available for persons displaced, a group consisting almost entirely
of people of color, whose access to housing was severely limited.28 Kansas City
redevelopment resulted in bulldozing low-income housing and replacing them with new
“To Appeal Housing Decision,” Kansas City Call, 23 December 1949, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 343.
24
25
“Sues over Home Sale,” Kansas City Call, 31 December 1949, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 343.
26
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
27
“The Spirit of Freedom.”
28
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
83
public facilities and middle-income housing. At the conclusion of the first eleven urban
renewal projects, over eleven thousand persons had been displaced from their homes, and
over half of them were low-income blacks. The Office of Housing and Community
Development noted that housing difficulties resulting from urban renewal were never
satisfactorily decided: “The failures of urban renewal redevelopment projects are the
personal and family histories of people who were forced out and could find no better place
to live.”29 As part of the redevelopment, Kansas City subsequently used public housing,
segregated public housing no less, to accommodate the displaced downtown residents. Thus,
blacks were placed primarily at T. B Watkins Homes and Wayne Miner.30 Wayne Miner, in
particular, would become infamous for its dilapidated features and crime-ridden existence; it
was a vertical slum of sorts.31 Housing would remain a profoundly problematic domain for
African Americans for decades beyond the Housing Act of 1949, but by the early 1950s
there was hope among many in the African American community that the public sector,
including schools, might be ripe for change.
Brown v. Board of Education and Destruction of the Dual System, 1952-1954
During the first Kansas City Conference on Human Relations in March of 1953, a
topic of serious consideration was how to work out, in advance of court order or legislative
enactment, the smooth transition to integrated schools.32 As part of the discussion,
“subordinate problems” were many and varied, such as considering how to integrate all of
29
“The Spirit of Freedom,” 38.
30
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
31
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
“Inventory of Intergroup Education Problems,” Paper presented at the Kansas City Conference on
Human Relations (March 1953), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
32
84
the black teachers into the integrated school system and how to prepare both white and black
children for integration. To be sure, the early 1950s were ushering in some significant
societal changes, but they were not without resistance. In 1952, a Kansas City Call article
covered the opening of public facilities to blacks:
In granting that Negroes have the same right to enjoy public facilities as other
citizens, the decision is another in a growing list of court rulings against the
“separate but equal” philosophy. It is another indication that there is no practical
method by which separate facilities can achieve actual equality.33
The one exception to the integration of public facilities was the Swope Park Pool,
which was ordered integrated after three black citizens filed suit in federal court. Upon the
decision of Judge Albert A. Ridge, the Board of Park Commissioners voted to close the pool
for the 1952 season rather than admit African Americans.34 The following year, however,
the pool was opened to blacks and whites on an integrated basis, and the Swope Park Pool
operated without incident, which eventually led to the integration of all swimming and
wading pools “to all persons of all races.”35 So with the integration of the swimming pools,
the last of the public facilities to integrate, all public-owned facilities in Kansas City were
theoretically open to all races and operating without racial discrimination. The public
schools of Kansas City, Missouri, as well, were undergoing a transformation from a dual
system to an integrated one following the groundbreaking Brown v. Board of Education
decision.36
33
“Another Step Nearer Real Democracy,” Kansas City Call, 18 April 1952.
34
“City Sets Poor Example for Citizens,” Kansas City Call, 6 June 1952, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 303.
“All Pools Are Open,” Kansas City Call, 27 May 1955, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 303.
35
36
Brown v. Board of Education, 347, U.S. 483 (1954).
85
In the late 1940s, under the leadership of Legal Defense Fund Director Thurgood
Marshall, the NAACP began a struggle to end the segregation of American educational
institutions. But the thought of confronting segregation in the white-dominated courts was
resisted among some in the NAACP leadership, and questions lingered: What would
desegregation of schools really mean in practice? Would desegregation destroy black
teachers and black institutions, including schools?37 Such thinking largely stemmed from the
notion that the NAACP should challenge inequality and not segregation, instead working to
ensure the equal part of separate-but-equal. W. E. B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was
initially in favor of integration, but by the mid-1930s had come to question the logic of
combating segregation, which he expressed in Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?:
The question which I am discussing is: Are these separate schools and institutions
needed? And the answer, to my mind, is perfectly clear. They are needed just so far
as they are necessary for the proper education of the Negro race. The proper
education of any people includes sympathetic touch between teacher and pupil;
knowledge on the part of the teacher, not simply of the individual taught, but of his
surroundings and background, and the history of his class group.38
Du Bois’s ideas about schools, however, never commanded majority support, and the
NAACP committed itself to fighting Jim Crow and segregated schools, emphasizing that
segregated schools featured glaring inequalities.
In Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, the Supreme Court
essentially banned racial separation in state colleges, suggesting that it violated the
Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.39 Yet, there was uncertainty at the time as
37
Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools,” Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (July
1935), 328.
38
39
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents 339 U.S. 627 (1950); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950).
86
to whether such a principle could be applied to elementary and secondary education. In
1952, however, five cases—originating in Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and
the District of Columbia—challenged segregation within school systems that required
segregated schools by constitutional or statutory mandate or provided for permissive
segregation at the behest of local school boards40 Each of the five cases was appealed to the
Supreme Court, and in 1952, the cases were combined into Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka.41 The named plaintiff, Oliver Brown, had a daughter, Linda Brown, who had to
walk blocks to her segregated elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, but a white school was
nearer her house. When Oliver Brown pushed for his daughter to be admitted into the white
school, she was denied entry. Thus, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was initiated.
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the Court’s unanimous opinion, in
which he stated: “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race,
even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the
children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it
does.”42 It was a decision that gave credence to the NAACP’s trial strategy, whereby they
relied mostly on the testimony of social scientists to bolster the claim that separate schools
were harmful in a variety of ways. The arguments stemmed from the harm and benefit thesis
and the work of Kenneth Clark, which included the following: self-esteem of black children
was low in segregated schools and that segregation led black children to be prejudiced
toward whites; segregation had negative effects on learning, as black children achieved at
40
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
41
Levine, African Americans and Civil Rights.
42
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
87
lower levels than white children; segregation placed a physical burden on black children, as
the distance traveled to attend school was often far; segregation was psychologically
damaging for black children because it caused frustration, apathy, and hostility; segregation
established a necessary precondition for prejudice; and, classifying students by race was not
justifiable.43 With the High Court’s ruling that segregated education violated the black
citizens’ constitutional right to equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth
Amendment, the dual school systems of more than half of the United States, including,
Missouri, were drastically altered.
Not surprisingly, the Deep South began to criticize the Brown ruling almost
immediately following the Court’s decision. In fact, Southern governors, in anticipation of
desegregation and well before the Supreme Court ruling even occurred, were vowing to defy
desegregation. Upon the Court’s decision, Georgia Governor Herman Tallmadge assumed a
clear stance of non-cooperation, stating, “I am calling the State Education Commission into
immediate session to map a program to ensure continued and permanent segregation of the
races.”44 In South Carolina, lawmakers had been empowered by public referendum to
convert the public schools to private schools where they saw fit. Governor Hugh White of
Mississippi said that he was “sad” and “disappointed” with the Court’s ruling, and Walter
Sillers, speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, suggested the state get out of
the education business altogether. An Alabama lawmaker recommended that a television be
Walter Stephan, “A Brief Historical Overview of School Desegregation,” in School Desegregation: Past,
Present, and Future, eds. Walter Stephan and Joe Feagin (New York: Plenum Press, 1980), 3-22.
43
44
“Mississippi Governor ‘Sad, Disappointed,’” Kansas City Call, 21 May 1954, 1.
88
used to teach Alabama children so as to avoid the physical integration of white and black
students in Alabama.45
Clearly, the so-called Solid South’s general reaction to Brown was one of open
disobedience. Brown II, in which the Court convened to order its directives, did little to
enforce compliance in the South, leaving implementation to be settled by local federal
district courts—courts that were operated by native white Southerners.46 Moreover, a vague
and ambiguous timetable was presented, in which the Court suggested desegregation be
done “with all deliberate speed.”47 The flexible standard of implementation was a result of
recognition among the Court that local circumstances varied considerably, but by leaving it
to the discretion of the states, reaction varied from immediate compliance to complete
obstinacy. In the South Carolina case, Briggs v. Elliott, a South Carolina District Court
stated the following:
It is important that we point out exactly what the Supreme Court has decided and
what it has not decided in this case. It has not decided that the federal courts are to
take over or regulate the public schools of the states. It has not decided that the states
must mix persons of different races in the schools or must require them to attend
schools or must deprive them of the right of choosing the schools they attend. What
it has decided, and all that it has decided, is that a state may not deny to any person
on account of race the right to attend any school that it maintains….[I]f the schools
which it maintains are open to children of all races, no violation of the Constitution
is involved even though the children of different races voluntarily attend different
schools, as they attend different churches. Nothing in the Constitution or in the
decision of the Supreme Court takes away from people freedom to choose the
schools they attend. The Constitution, in other words, does not require integration. It
merely forbids discrimination.48
45
Ibid., 4.
Brian J. Daugherity and Charles C. Bolton, With All Deliberate Speed: Implementing Brown v. Board of
Education (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008).
46
47
Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
48
Briggs v. Elliott, 132 F. Supp. 776 (1955), 777.
89
Freedom of choice plans would most certainly prove to be an effective means by which
many states in the South were able to avoid real desegregation.49 It became clear almost
immediately following the Brown II implementation decision that the South was going to
resist desegregation, whether through outward resistance or more covert methods veiled in
misleading language, such as freedom of choice.
The response outside of the South was decidedly different, most notably in the
Border States. The Border States, Southern states that did not secede from the union,
included Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Delaware. It took
Baltimore, Maryland’s Board of Education only two weeks to unanimously approve a
desegregation plan, and Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, Delaware, also commenced
desegregation almost immediately following the Brown decision.50 In Missouri, a similar
pattern was followed.
Missouri State Commissioner of Education, Hubert Wheeler, like many, began
planning for the Brown ruling before it had been decided. In March of 1954, Wheeler wrote
a memo, in which he said:
In Missouri we shall most certainly want to examine carefully the ruling of the
United States Supreme Court in regard to white and negro education. Any statement
previous to the study of the ruling of the Court must be general in nature. Should the
Supreme Court rule that the states may continue the segregation of negro and white
students, our Constitution and statutes now make provisions for such segregation. If
the United States Supreme Court rules against segregation, it would, I suppose,
nullify that portion of our Constitution and our state laws as now established in
Missouri.51
49
Raymond Wolters, The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1984).
50
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
Hubert Wheeler, “U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Segregation in the Public Schools” (March 1954), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 310.
51
90
Then, just following the Supreme Court’s decision on June 15, 1954, in a letter to county
and district superintendents, Wheeler expressed the board’s desire to implement the Brown
decision “to the fullest extent of its authority and jurisdiction” but cautioned that a decision
by Attorney General John M. Dalton would be necessary before proceeding.52 Just days after
Wheeler’s letter, Attorney General Dalton stated the following regarding desegregation in
Missouri:
[I]t is the opinion of the office that the provisions of the Missouri Constitution and
statutes, relating to separate schools for white and colored children are superseded by
the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and are, therefore,
unenforceable, and that school districts may at the present time permit white and
colored children to attend the same schools.53
For most Missouri towns, by virtue of the small numbers of black students, the
decision to desegregate did not involve any major realignment. In fact, the cost of
maintaining a dual system for these small rural towns was often burdensome, so it is likely
that in some ways, at least from a sheer financial position, the Brown decision was a bit of a
relief. For larger cities, St. Louis and Kansas City in particular, desegregation would require
forethought and planning. St. Louis was especially quick to announce its desegregation plan,
which it began implementing in September of 1954 and continued in phases through
September of 1955.54 As St. Louis announced its plan, the Kansas City, Missouri School
District Research Department began considering its options.
Hubert Wheeler, Missouri State Commissioner of Education, to District and County Superintendents (15
June 1954), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 310.
52
53
Hubert Wheeler, Missouri State Commissioner of Education memo to District and County
Administrators, regarding “Opinion of Attorney General John M. Dalton in reference to Decision of U.S.
Supreme Court on Segregation in the Public Schools” (1 July 1954), State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 310.
54
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
91
A July 15, 1954 report titled, “A Study of the Problems Involved in the
Desegregation of the Public Schools in Kansas City” presented district leadership with three
possible options: delay desegregation until further word from the Supreme Court,
desegregate all schools beginning in September of 1954, or initiate a program of gradual
desegregation in September 1954 and proceed systematically over a period of time.55 At the
time of the report, the Kansas City, Missouri School District had already desegregated
summer school classes. Despite the fact that summer school was only offered at two schools,
Westport and Lincoln High Schools, and that the vast majority of black summer school
students—all but three—would attend Lincoln, the act was small but symbolic, revealing
that Kansas City was going to take the Brown decision seriously.56 With regard to the larger
desegregation plan, like St. Louis, the Kansas City, Missouri School District opted for a
gradual approach and consequently initiated a desegregation plan with two phases. The first
phase was to commence the 1954-1955 school year by transferring students at the previously
all-black Lincoln Junior College to the Kansas City Junior College at Thirty-Ninth Street
and McGee. Additionally, the vocational divisions of R. T. Coles Vocational School would
be transferred to the formerly all-white Manual Vocational School. The R.T. Coles building,
then, would become the site for an integrated seventh and eighth grade junior high.57 It was
noted in the annual reports to the superintendent for the 1954-1955 school year that initial
55
“A Study in the Problems Involved in the Desegregation in the Public Schools of Kansas City,” Kansas
City, Missouri School District Research Department (July 1954), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur
A. Benson II, Box 310.
56
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools, 14.
Policies for Transition from System of Separate Schools to Desegregated School System,
Superintendent’s Office (March 1955), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 310.
57
92
efforts of desegregation “were managed very successfully on both the student and faculty
levels.”
The second phase, then, was planned to begin in September of 1955, meaning the
1955-1956 school year would be the first official year of full-blown desegregation. Phase
two, therefore, was to include the desegregation of the entire Kansas City, Missouri School
District. Lastly, the school district emphasized the need to establish and publicize boundary
lines of all schools “as soon as possible.”58
Not everyone was satisfied with the district’s course of action. Lewis Clymer,
Chairman of the Education Committee of the Kansas City Urban League, and Lee Reader,
Chairman of the Commission on Human Relations, made several suggestions to the Kansas
City School Board, and both individuals offered their respective organization’s services,
only to be told that they were not needed. In a letter dated May 25, 1954, from Lewis
Clymer to Ray Joslyn, President of the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s Board of
Education, Clymer formally offered support in planning the desegregation plan, but Kansas
City, Missouri school officials declined. It appears that district leadership relied solely on
their own people to devise the desegregation plan, a strategy that would routinely be
employed and a policy that continued to especially anger black Kansas Citians. Despite their
unwillingness to consult with anyone on the outside, the Kansas City, Missouri School
District had decided on a course of action, and in the fall of 1955, it was time for
implementation.59
Desegregation in the Kansas City, Missouri School District, 1955-1962
58
Ibid.
Lewis Clymer, Urban League of Kansas City, to Lewis Clymer, Chair Education Committee (May 1954),
State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
59
93
As Gwendolyn Adams prepared for her first day of school in September of 1955, her
sophomore year, a feeling of dread overcame her. This was not the sense of uncertainty or
trepidation that often accompanies a first day of school. This was different. Adams was
angry. She was angry because she felt as though she was being forced to leave a school and
community that she knew and enjoyed only to attend a different school, a school that
seemed ever so distant. Adams was among the first of Kansas City’s black students to enter
a formerly all-white high school, as she was transferred from Lincoln High School to
Central High School in 1955. The importance of the moment was of little concern to fifteenyear-old Gwendolyn Adams. Foremost on Adams’s mind was the school, as well as teachers
and friends, whom she would leave behind at Lincoln:
When you are outside of it now and looking in that was, well…a piece of history.
My mother talked to me, you know, and she told me how to behave and how to, you
know, what it was all about and this is a big step for you. That went in one ear and
out the other because I was of the mindset I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to go.
So all of the positives that were given to me, they weren’t registering at all. And I’m
used to all black teachers and people that I know and I could go to Mrs. Fox—I
remember this one teacher. She was just…I loved her to death. She would send out
for lunch to get French fries and hamburgers and stuff. You’re not going to get that
at Central. Come on! But the first year I was very angry, and my grades failed. But I
wasn’t a failing student….And so my mother sat down and she talked to me again
about it and she had been talking to me all along….But my life was too peaceful—I
was happy where I was, you know60
Adams was describing what many black students felt at all-black institutions, a very real
feeling of comfort and belonging, a sense of community. It was the institutional caring she
became accustomed to at Lincoln High School that she feared losing when she was
transferred to Central in the spirit of desegregation, and with good reason. Adams noted
feeling uncomfortable or out of place at Central during her first couple of years, and it had
much to do with her teachers:
60
Gwendolyn Adams, conversation with author, 18 September 2012.
94
I don’t think it was just me, but I didn’t feel a lot coming from my teachers….I’m
not used to teachers being aloof and just handing paper and do this. No
communication. No nothing outside of school….I think that there were teachers who
were there that did not want to because of the way they interacted with us.61
While the transition for Adams was most certainly a difficult one, aside from the occasional
tiff or argument, it was not violent, something Kansas City’s district leaders had feared.
With the initiation of widespread desegregation in the fall of 1955, Kansas City,
Missouri School District emerged as one of the examples of successful desegregation. In
recounting the 1955-1956 school year, a 1956 Kansas City Star article suggested that,
despite some tension, racial integration had “proceeded smoothly.”62 A Kansas City Call
article expressed similar sentiments:
The public schools of Kansas City, Missouri are more integrated than it was
anticipated last spring they would be. Forty-three out of a total of 92 schools have
both white and negro pupils enrolled. The Kansas City school board has done well as
far as the integration of students is concerned.”63
Desegregation in Kansas City avoided a major incident and did, in fact, unfold rather
uneventfully throughout the fall of 1955. However, the quality and extent of the early efforts
of Superintendent James A. Hazlett, the school board, and district leadership were
questionable.
The public face of Kansas City’s desegregation effort, whether rightly or wrongly,
became Superintendent Hazlett, who was hired in 1955 after serving as Director of the
Kansas City, Missouri School District’s Research Department from 1951 to 1955. Hazlett’s
rise to superintendency was described by a 1955 article in the Central Luminary as a
61
Ibid.
“A Big Year for the Schools,” Kansas City Star, 4 June 1956, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Public.
62
“43 Integrated Schools,” Kansas City Call, 22 September 1955, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
63
95
“success story.”64 A Kansas City native, Hazlett attended Kansas City, Missouri School
District schools from kindergarten through junior college, before obtaining his master’s
degree at Kansas City University. Hazlett then went on to serve as both a teacher and
principal in the Kansas City, Missouri School District. He taught at various elementary
schools between 1938 and 1945 and then was principal from 1945 to 1951. As a result of his
intimate relationship with the Kansas City, Missouri School District (as student, teacher, and
building-level, as well as central office administrator) Hazlett did indeed know the problems
of the Kansas City schools, and it appears that he was honing his leadership skills from an
early age, having participated as Paseo High School’s senior class president, student council
president, and member of the National Honor Society.65 He most certainly needed leadership
acumen to navigate the challenges of desegregation in Kansas City, and he would be tested
early and often in his tenure.
Among the first of the challenges Hazlett faced was the plight of the black teacher.
Interestingly, when asked in 1955 the biggest problem facing the Kansas City, Missouri
School District, Hazlett suggested that it was the teacher shortage.66 The fact that Hazlett did
not claim desegregation as the biggest problem is likely a result of the fact that he did not
view desegregation at that point as problematic. After all, reports in 1955 were that
desegregation in Kansas City was proceeding as well as could have been expected. Thus, the
teacher shortage, which was resulting in substitute teachers in full-time assignments, was in
64
Central Luminary, 23 September 1955, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
65
Ibid., 1.
66
Ibid., 1.
96
part seen as an issue of teacher pay. An Independent Educational Association, Inc. report
noted in 1953 the need for an increase in teacher pay:
In the late 1920s and the 1930s a number of school systems paid maximum salaries
for classroom teachers up to $4500 and $4600. Today, about $8650 would be needed
to equal in purchasing power a pre-war salary (1935-39) of $4500….The proposed
minimum scale of $3600 to $8200 represents what a range of $1872 to $4264 would
have meant in pre-war years.67
The issue of teacher pay was particularly acute in Kansas City. Teachers in the Kansas City,
Missouri School District were, as of 1960, paid less than teachers in all of the thirteen
districts in and around Kansas City, except Lee’s Summit, and on a national stage, Kansas
City, Missouri, ranked 78th out of 121 of the largest American cities in beginning teacher
pay. Beginning teachers in the thirty-three highest- paying cities were making over one
thousand dollars more than Kansas City’s beginning teachers.68 The teacher shortage, which
was certainly a result of low compensation, infuriated black Kansas Citians. While Hazlett
was claiming there were not enough teachers to fill Kansas City, Missouri’s, classrooms,
Kansas City’s black teachers, many of whom lost their jobs with the closure of black
schools, were having great difficulty in finding work in the newly desegregated Kansas City,
Missouri School District.
Following the Brown decision, black teachers across the country lost their jobs.
Many of these teachers were better educated and more experienced than their white
counterparts, yet black teachers were the first to be dismissed and the last to be hired. This
was most certainly true in Kansas City, which sparked a flurry of articles and editorials
written in the Kansas City Call in 1955 addressing the black teacher’s struggle. One such
Kansas City, Missouri School District Research Department, “To Respondents to Our Salary
Questionnaires” (December 1953), Missouri Valley Special Collections, Hazlett Papers.
67
68
“City is Losing Top Teachers,” Kansas City Star, 28 September 1960, 1A.
97
article in January of 1955 posed the question, “How much longer is the Kansas City board of
education going to fail to employ new Negro teachers?”69 Another such article stated the
following:
The Kansas City board of education is not being fair. For more than a year now, it
has failed to hire new Negro teachers on a regular basis, although hundreds of new
white teachers have been brought into the system. The excuses given this time last
year for not hiring Negro teachers was that a large number of regular teachers were
on leave and their places had to be held open for them. New Negro teachers brought
into the system were given “reserve” status and served all year without
contract…Apparently, the board has adopted a policy of hiring no more Negro
teachers, no matter how well qualified they might be.70
A variety of tricks were employed to keep black teachers out of classrooms. In the
South, particularly in Virginia, thirty-day contracts were implemented, whereby a teacher
would have to sign a new contract every month, empowering the school district to get rid of
black teachers at will. A similar technique, though not a thirty-day contract, was used in
Kansas City, Missouri, where many black teachers were placed on “reserve” and thus not
offered a contract. In many cases, however, black teachers were simply dismissed.71 By
1961, the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights
estimated that 125 to 150 black teachers in Missouri had, as a result of initial desegregation,
lost their employment. Understandably, Kansas City’s black community was angered at the
Kansas City, Missouri School District’s unwillingness to meaningfully address the issue.
While the struggle of black teachers and black administrators would continue for years, it
69
“Time to Hire Teachers,” Kansas City Call, 24 January 1955, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
“Are Our Teachers ‘Frozen’ Out,” Kansas City Call, 8 July 1955, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
70
“All Kinds of Tricks against Teachers,” Kansas City Call, 6 May 1955, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 306.
71
98
was one of two major complaints in the immediate aftermath of Brown and would
eventually become one of many criticisms confronted by the school district.
The other issue originating with initial desegregation efforts was that of student
transfers. School officials in Kansas City determined that desegregation could be most
readily achieved through the dissolution of the dual attendance zones, which under de jure
segregation kept black and white students separate. Often, black students lived closer to
white schools than the black schools, but black students would have to walk past the white
schools in order to get to their respective black school. Alvin Brooks vividly recalled his
days walking past the neighborhood white school, which was only several blocks from his
house, to get to Dunbar. He described how he and his black friends would often walk to
school with white kids from the neighborhood: “They’d [white students] stop, and we’d
keep on going…and catch the Thirty-First Street street-car and then go to Vine and catch the
bus.”72 With the destruction of the dual system and the insistence of the Kansas City,
Missouri School District to keep a neighborhood concept intact, theoretically Kansas City,
Missouri’s, black students would attend the school nearest their house. As was the case with
Brooks, many black students would attend formerly all-white schools, and conversely, many
white students would be slotted to attend former all-black schools. While the district did
spend months considering and re-drawing district attendance lines, much of it was veiled in
secrecy. In the end, however, the Kansas City, Missouri School District did rely on
geographical zoning in their attempt to integrate the schools, a decision that upheld the
Brown mandate to dissolve the former system of segregation and provide assignment of
72
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
99
students on a non-discriminatory basis. Such an approach, nevertheless, seriously limited the
effectiveness of the effort.
The district desegregation plan included the continuation of the longstanding and
liberal transfer policy: “The Board approves the continuation of the established practices of
granting transfers, provided that no transfers shall be issued to schools where, in the
judgment of the Superintendent of Schools, capacity of the building has been reached.”73
Transfers were subsequently granted for a variety of reasons, including the following: to
take a course of study not offered at the school of the resident district; to take advantage of
convenient transportation; to complete one’s senior year or part of any year, where a pupil
was previously enrolled; to avoid perilous traffic situations; to make for a better pupil
adjustment; and to permit continuation in the junior high school.74 Indeed, the district did
close schools that were above capacity, but students who wanted to transfer to schools that
were below capacity, were essentially free to do so, regardless of race. The school district, in
fact, did not inquire about a student’s race on the application so as to avoid preferential
treatment.75 As such, the liberal transfer policy became the primary vehicle by which white
students avoided initial desegregation efforts. Although the Brown decision seemingly
ushered in a new age in American schooling, the transfer policy, coupled with the district’s
shifting of boundaries and growing residential segregation, all but guaranteed that the
students of the Kansas City, Missouri School District would remain segregated. Central
High School, which went from one hundred percent white during the 1954-1955 school
Policies for Transition from Separate Schools to Desegregated School System, Superintendent’s Office
(6 March 1955), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 310, 4.
73
74
Ibid., 29.
75
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
100
year, the last year of segregated schooling, to just under ninety-eight percent black during
the 1961-1962 school year, reveals the complexities of the situation and the importance of
the schooling-housing nexus, in particular, in the southeastern neighborhoods of Kansas
City, Missouri. 76
Central High School and Its Neighborhoods, 1955-1962
In Central’s first year as a desegregated school, 1955-1956, it was twenty-eight
percent black. This increased to just over forty-one percent black during the 1956-1957
school year, and in 1957-1958 Central was for the first time majority black, nearly fiftyeight percent. The trend continued until in 1960, when the formerly all-white Central High
School reached over ninety-five percent black, and would remain thereafter at least ninetyeight percent black or more for the next three decades.77 The rapid transformation of Central
High School from all white to all black in a short five-year span was largely the result of a
dramatic shift in residential patterns.
The Census data between 1940 and 1960 for the Central High School census tract, an
area at the time that extended one-half square mile and included a population of nearly 9,000
people, mirrored that of the school. In 1940, the area was 99.6 percent white, and in 1950 it
was 99.8 percent white. But by 1960, the neighborhoods around Central High School at
Linwood Boulevard and Indiana Avenue were eighty-two percent black and 17.9 percent
white.78 Alvin Brooks, a police officer and resident of the Central High School attendance
area in 1960 at 3336 Agnes just several blocks from Central, remembered how whites
76
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984, Arthur Benson,
unpublished demographic data, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 567.
Nineteenth Annual Report on Desegregation in the Kansas City Public Schools (1973-1974), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 452.
77
78
Social Explorer Professional, 1940-1960, accessed October 12, 2013, www.socialexplorer.com.
101
reacted in fear to blacks moving into the area. He specifically recalled a meeting that he
attended at an all-white church at Twenty-Ninth and Prospect in 1960, which he estimated
attracted some four hundred people, mostly whites, to discuss the neighborhood
transformation. Brooks explained that he had endured enough. He was tired of listening to
his white neighbors insist that the arrival of black families were causing their property
values to fall. So while at the neighborhood meeting, Brooks went to the microphone to
address the crowd, a bold move considering he remembered being only one of fifteen
African Americans at the meeting, but he was fed up:
Let me tell you what…you are accusing us, what, twenty-five or thirty percent of us
causing your property values to go down. May I see the hands of those of you who a
black person knocked on your door to buy your house? May I see your hands? How
about was there a black person who came and said I’m going to shoot you with gun
in hand unless you get out?...We didn’t cause your property values to go down. You
caused it to go down….You fell right into the racist trap. And when they said to you
‘look who’s coming in. You better move out.’ We didn’t tell you ‘you better move
out.’ None of us knocked on your door and said we’re going to sell your home or
you got to sell your home. Nobody knocked on your door with a gun in their hand
and said you better get out.79
Brooks was right. White residents were not being forced out; they were choosing to leave,
but their decisions were being influenced by the tactics of realtors looking to make fast
money. Despite the efforts of those like Brooks who were willing to confront whites seeking
to leave the area at any cost, the flight continued at a rapid pace throughout the 1950s and
1960s.
In 1954, Thomas L. Gillette, a master’s student in the Department of Sociology at the
University of Kansas City, wrote a master’s thesis titled, “Santa Fe: A Study of the Effects
of Negro Invasion on Property Values.” Gillette stated the impetus of the study was the
“recent and quite rapid expansion of the Negro population in the city and the accompanying
79
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
102
increase in awareness of intergroup hostility.”80 The Santa Fe neighborhood of Kansas City
is currently and was historically bound by Twenty-Seventh Street to the north, Linwood to
the south, Prospect to the east, and Indiana to the west.81 In the early 1950s, as it had for
decades previously, Twenty-Seventh Street served as a division between white residents and
black residents. Very few blacks lived south of Twenty-Seventh Street prior to the 1950s,
but in the 1950s, the Twenty-Seventh Street divide began to dissolve. Between 1950 and
1960, the white population of southeast Kansas City, Missouri, went from 126,229 to
88,986. The total population during the same time period, however, only decreased from
169,047 to 163,119, but the white population fell from roughly seventy-five to fifty-five
percent of the total.82 Conversely, the black population in the same area expanded from
41,348 to 73,788, growth that resulted in a percentage increase from twenty-four to beyond
forty-five.83 As whites fled the southeast area of Kansas City, Missouri, and blacks moved
in, Twenty-Seventh Street no longer served as a dividing line. In its wake, however, a new
and equally stringent line of demarcation occupied its place: Troost Avenue.
As the first black families moved south of Twenty-Seventh Street and into the
southeastern part of Kansas City, Missouri, white residents reacted with violence. In fact, the
house of the first black family to move to Twenty-Seventh and Paseo was bombed in May of
1952. The May bombing resulted in only minimal damage, but the house became a target
again in September of the same year. The second bombing caused considerable damage, and
80
Thomas Gillette, “Santa Fe: A Study of the Effects of Negro Invasion on Property Values” (Master’s
thesis, 1954), 1.
Kansas City, City Planning and Development Department, City of Kansas City, Missouri, “Santa Fe
Neighborhood Assessment Report” (July 2001), Missouri Valley Special Collections.
81
82
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, 95.
83
Ibid., 95.
103
the black family who had moved into the 2700 block of Paseo was under a constant barrage
of threats and torments.84 The white response to black families crossing Twenty-Seventh
Street was obviously one born of racism and prejudice, where whites viewed homogenous
white neighborhoods as superior. The fear, then, among whites that blacks would devalue
their property resulted initially in pushback in the way of violence and threats, but
eventually whites simply left. White flight was in large part the result of the actions of
deceitful realtors.
Beginning in the 1950s, Troost Avenue became a racially identifiable boundary
between white and black. This was, in part, a result of the discriminatory actions of Kansas
City, Missouri School District leaders who used Troost Avenue as a school boundary
between black and white schools, whereby black schools were located to the east of Troost
and white schools to the west.85 This separation occurred almost immediately following the
Brown decision in 1954, and by 1970, all elementary and secondary schools east of Troost
Avenue were ninety percent or more black, and every elementary and secondary school west
of Troost was less than fifty percent black.86 By virtue of its location, just south of TwentySeventh Street and east of Troost, Central High School was one of the first schools to
undergo a swift transformation from all white to all black. With the school district’s use of
Troost Avenue as a racially identifiable school boundary in the post-Brown period, residents
began to associate neighborhoods east of Troost as black neighborhoods and neighborhoods
west of Troost as white neighborhoods. Realtors, too, in the mid-1950s began using Troost
84
Gillette, “Santa Fe,” 3.
85
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
86
Ibid.
104
as a racial dividing line and thus marketed houses for sale east of Troost to blacks only,
further solidifying the notion that black neighborhoods were more unstable than white
neighborhoods and thus needed to be separate. It was the use of blockbusting techniques
among Kansas City realtors however, that ultimately led to large numbers of whites leaving
the neighborhoods of southeast Kansas City, Missouri.
Realtors literally went door-to-door to encourage whites to sell their homes and flee
the impending black movement and subsequent racial succession of the neighborhood, and
whites took the bait. Almost immediately following the sale of a single house to a black
family, the entire block of whites would follow, vulnerable to realtors’ fear tactics as a result
of prejudice and racism—truly believing that the presence of a black family in a white
neighborhood would result in declining property values, crime, and general neighborhood
malaise. Blockbusting, indeed, proved to be a useful and lucrative tactic, and it was no secret
to residents of the southeast area. A 1955 editorial in the Kansas City Call claimed that the
over-zealousness of realtors was a central factor in the inability to build interracial
neighborhoods.87 While blockbusting and panic selling were having a profound impact on
neighborhoods throughout the southeast area in the 1950s and 1960s, some residents decided
to take on the real estate industry themselves, including one neighborhood around Central
High School.88
In 1955, a pastor of the Southeast Presbyterian Church, Pastor Earl T. Sturgess,
attempted to halt white flight from his neighborhood near Central High School by placing a
87
“A Good Plan Sabotaged,” Kansas City Call, 7 October 1955, 20.
88
Brown and Dorsett, A History of Kansas City, Missouri.
105
sign in his yard and his neighbors that read “not for sale.”89 The My Home is Not for Sale
campaign, which promoted interracial neighborhoods, gained appeal in various
neighborhoods around Kansas City and even received national notoriety at one point, but the
forces of racism and prejudice were too great. Sturgess’s campaign was relatively shortlived, and despite efforts of opposition to panic selling, whites continued to leave the
southeast area in search of homogenous neighborhoods in the suburbs, and blacks kept
moving into the area in search of better and bigger houses. Thus, Central High School,
situated prominently in Kansas City, Missouri’s, southeast side just beyond Twenty-Seventh
Street, became the first school to undergo a total resegregation: all white in 1955, Central
was all black in 1962.
It was business as usual at Central during the 1955-1956 school year. Interestingly,
very little about desegregation is covered in the student newspaper, The Luminary, over the
course of the entire academic year. The only mention of race in the paper occurs in the
March 1956 edition, in which a section titled “Human Relations Ledger” was introduced.
The ledger was seemingly created to cover both the good and the bad, or so-called
“Liabilities” and “Assets” of the school.90 The March 23, 1956 ledger includes four separate
“liabilities,” each occurring on a different day and having to do with a racial incident
involving Central students. One incident involved a junior high student having thrown a
firecracker that exploded near a white boy, which then led to a fight on school grounds;
another had to do with a group of white male students who resented the presence of blacks at
Central and tried to organize a strike to protest integration; still another resulted in unknown
89
Ibid., 256.
90
Central Luminary, 23 March 1956, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 3.
106
persons affixing a “Ku Klux cross” to Central’s flagpole and setting it ablaze; lastly, a group
of black students, both boys and girls, allegedly tried to “cause trouble” as home-going
students left Central at the end of school.91 The “Asset” portion, like the “Liability” section,
included separate incidents having involved Central students, but this time they are
celebratory: the first “Asset” described how a black student was applauded by Central
students for her solo performance; the next discussed how a black student in the girls’ choir
performed a solo at a performance at the First Baptist Church in Independence; and the last
explained how black and white band members at Central cooperated to make the Annual
Band Festival a success.92 The absence of substantial coverage regarding desegregation in
the student newspaper at Central High School is interesting and most likely a deliberate
effort to downplay its significance. Presumably, Central’s white administrators, faculty, and
student body were not interested in highlighting stories about Central’s new black students.
Meanwhile, Central’s black students, a mere ten percent of the student population
during the 1955-1956 school year, were trying to adapt to their new and unfamiliar
surroundings. Lyle Davis, Jr., a sophomore in 1955 and one of the pioneering black students
at Central, recalled the peculiarity of his new, mostly white school: “I walk in that first day,
and I see all these white kids. They look so much older. Here I am a little black kid walking
in there.”93 Davis, Jr. did settle in at Central and befriended white classmates, friends with
whom he still keeps in touch with today, but he did not have a single black teacher during
his three years at the school and remembered the first couple of years at Central as
91
Ibid., 3.
92
Ibid., 3.
93
Lyle Davis, Jr., conversation with author, 7 November 2012.
107
“tough.”94 The academic education, however, Davis, Jr. described as “great.”95 Indeed, the
social and emotional support that Davis, Jr. received from his black teachers at all-black
R. T. Coles School before desegregation, he explained, was lacking among the white
teachers of Central. In reference to his experiences at all-black schools with black faculty,
Davis, Jr. said: “You knew the teachers [and they] seemed to be more interested.”96 But the
academic instruction at Central was “excellent,” according to Davis, Jr. He elaborated: “You
asked me about the overall quality of education. It was fantastic. They [teachers] put it on
you and, and they expected you to know this.”97 Central students had long prided themselves
on academic excellence, and the spirit of such continued forward after 1955.
In 1960, the Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences listed Central
High School first in high schools within the state of Missouri in numbers of its alumni
among 1958 doctorates and in the top seventy-five high schools in the United States.98
Moreover, in 1959 three Centralites placed among the highest ten thousand scores in the
National Merit Qualifying Test given to more than one-half million students, and Central
graduates were making names for themselves at Harvard, Yale, and MIT, as well as other
top colleges.99 This continued success led to a student editorial that stated:
How does Central rate? Let’s look for ourselves:…Central High School is the oldest
in Kansas City, and as far as campus goes, it is one of the prettiest. The school’s
equipment and facilities are more than adequate. It also has a wide range of subjects.
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid.
97
Ibid.
98
Central Luminary, 1 April 1960, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
99
Central Luminary, 23 October 1959, 1; 6 November 1959, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
108
We offer four languages and six courses in English. Scholastically we rate in the top
five in Kansas City and can hold our own in the state as well. Forty percent of our
students attend college although a great many more have the entrance requirements,
thanks to our marvelous faculty. Forty scholarships were awarded last year out of a
class of 390, as compared to ten years ago when three or four scholarships were
awarded out of a class of 500.100
Despite the doting students, white students were leaving “dear old Central” rapidly. The fact
that Central was one of only a few schools in the Midwest offering four years in Latin,
German, and Spanish, as well as courses in college-level chemistry, math, biology, and
drafting, was not enough to entice white students to stay.101 As black families moved into
the Central attendance area and black students in increasing numbers began attending
Central High School, white families either found ways to transfer their children out of
Central High School or simply left the area. On average, Central lost white students at a rate
of roughly twenty percent per year between 1957 and 1960.102
In September of 1958, Central’s first black administrator, Girard T. Bryant, took up
his new post. Bryant was the former vice-principal at Manual High School. He had also
taught in Bangkok, Thailand, and he came to Central with impressive credentials. Bryant
had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a master’s from the University
of Kansas, and when he took the position as vice-principal at Central, Bryant was working
toward his PhD at Washington University in St. Louis.103 Bryant would precede Central’s
new white principal, James Boyd, by a year. Boyd, a former Chemistry teacher at Central
who had left Central to become Northeast High School’s vice-principal, became Central’s
100
Central Luminary, 14 February 1958, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 3.
101
Central Luminary, 6 November, 1959, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 2.
102
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-55—1983-1984.
103
Central Luminary, 19 September 1958, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
109
principal in 1959, the same year that Central curiously lost twenty of its teachers to
transfer.104 There is no mention in the Central Luminary as to why the teachers left, just that
“three teachers retired; three have taken a year’s leave of absence for advanced study; and
20 have transferred to other schools in Kansas City or further away.”105 Many of the white
teachers who transferred did so as a result of the growing number of black students who
were calling Central their own. Central was over seventy percent black at the beginning of
the 1959-1960 school year, and it would be ninety-nine percent black by the beginning of
the 1962-1963 school year.106 Central’s black students continued to perform at a very high
level into the 1960s, but new challenges of growing inequalities at the behest of district
leaders would confront Kansas City, Missouri’s, black students and families throughout the
1960s and 1970s.
104
Central Luminary, 25 September 1959, Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
105
Ibid.
106
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-55—1983-1984.
110
CHAPTER 5
WHERE’S THE EQUALITY? THE RESEGREGATION OF THE
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI SCHOOL DISTRICT, 1962-1968
Success at Central High School, 1962-1964
Loretta Stewart, a graduate of the class of 1963, proudly and fondly remembers her
time at Central High School, but Stewart’s path to Central was far from easy. Her first years
in Kansas City’s desegregated school system were ones of extreme isolation. In reference to
that first year, Stewart remembered how she was the only black student in her fifth grade
class during the 1955-1956 school year immediately following Kansas City, Missouri
School District’s desegregation effort:
It’s just the memory of the isolation, of not having anyone like me to talk to. I’ll
never forget the one thing that really made me understand that I really wasn’t part of
that school. They had a girl scout troop and I had made friends with a young lady
and she and I would go to the library. She would come to my house and I would go
to her house, and she was in girl scouts [too]…and, so I was like, I was all excited
about joining girl scouts. This was something totally new to me. We didn’t have girl
scouts in my church. So, you know, I was like okay. Great! Well, a few days later
she came back to me and she said: ‘I’m sorry, my mom said you can’t be in the girl
scouts’….She told me because I wasn’t white.1
In striking contrast to her first year in a mostly all-white classroom and school, Stewart’s
years at segregated Kansas City, Missouri’s, Charles Sumner Elementary School were
anything but isolating:
I had great teachers. Everybody was concerned about us. They made sure that we
understood that we were expected to give our best and to do our best….and you
1
Loretta Stewart, conversation with author, 2 November 2012.
111
know we were all sort of family. Even though we might not have been actually
related, there was a family atmosphere to that time.2
Stewart, explained, as well, that the collective, family atmosphere extended beyond the
school walls and enveloped the community. She described that all members of the
community—teachers, church leaders, parents, and neighbors—were responsible for
watching out for children in the neighborhood. As a child, Stewart had visions of attending
Lincoln Junior High School and Lincoln High School, the one-time segregated junior high
and high school in Kansas City, Missouri, and continuing to benefit from the robust
neighborhood community she so cherished. But like many black families in the mid- to late1950s, Stewart’s family moved to a bigger house on Twenty-Ninth Street:
We were not allowed to move past Twenty-Seventh Street until I guess I must have
been in seventh grade. And then we moved to Twenty-Ninth Street, which was wow!
You know, we moved out South! I had my own room and the neighborhood was
just…it was a nice neighborhood, and all of a sudden we looked around and all of the
white people were gone. And it was a black neighborhood….In a blink of an eye.3
It was the move to Twenty-Ninth Street that ended Stewart’s dream of attending Lincoln
Junior High School and Lincoln High School, and took her to Central Junior High School
and Central High School instead.
Referencing her time at Central High School and the changing demographics,
Stewart claimed that “there were white kids all over the place” her freshman year, in 1959,
but by 1963, her senior year, she remembered two.4 Stewart admitted that she was not
thrilled about attending high school at Central, in large part because, despite her family’s
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
112
move, she still hoped to reunite with her friends at Lincoln. Yet, her time at Central proved
to be most enjoyable:
My, they [her teachers] were hard. They were hard on us and they pushed us. They
really pushed us….I was in the upper-level classes, and so you know, they didn’t
give us any breaks. You did the work. I never really had a problem with my
teachers…there were a good mix of instructors who were nonwhite, which makes a
difference, you know. If somebody was not treating us fairly we would go in and talk
to the counselor, Mr. Paulson, and talk to the principal, Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd listened
to what we had to say.”5
James F. Boyd, who Stewart remembered fondly, was Central High School’s white principal
from 1959 to 1969. In 1969, Boyd was appointed Director of Secondary Education for the
Kansas City, Missouri School District and was replaced by Central’s first black head
principal, Cornelius Settles.6 Indeed, Boyd was recognized as a progressive educator by
those inside and outside of the Kansas City, Missouri School District. In 1962, Boyd was
one of sixty administrators chosen to receive the John Hay Fellowship at Colorado College.7
Additionally, that same year, Boyd was invited to speak to a Dallas, Texas school
administrators’ group regarding his success in leading a high school with a predominately
black student population. The organization’s president, Mr. S. A. Cain, said that Boyd was
sought as a result of his “unusual accomplishments” with black students.8 The recognition
was not lost on Central’s students: “Because of the wonderful record that Central students
have made, Central has become nationally known. For Mr. Boyd to have been chosen to
speak before this organization is an honor that all in the Central-Linwood Community
5
Ibid.
6
Central Luminary, 25 September 1959; 26 September 1969, 1.
7
Central Luminary, 11 May 1962, 1.
8
Central Luminary, 21 September 1962, 1.
113
should be proud.”9 Most certainly by the early 1960s, all-black Central High School, just as
it had done when it was all-white, was proving itself to be one of the best high schools in the
state of Missouri.
There were two national publications in the spring and summer of 1961 that explored
the successes of Central High School: Harper’s Magazine’s “The Good Slum Schools” and
Time Magazine’s “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City.”10 Both articles were premised
on the notion that there was something uniquely intriguing about Kansas City’s Central High
School, a school that went from all-white to all-black and not only maintained its record of
excellence, but exceeded it:
In its last years as an all-white school, Central never sent more than 15 per cent of its
graduates to college, and only four or five Central kids won scholarships in an
average year. Now, despite the great drop in socio-economic level, 150 out of 350
graduates go on to college, 50 of them with scholarships…In recent years, Central
has sent its Negro graduates to Yale, Vassar, Smith, Oberlin, Northwestern, and
Chicago, among others.11
Forestal Lawton, a member of the 1962 graduating class, was one of the
aforementioned successful African American students at Central. Lawton had been class
president at Central Junior High School, and he carried forward to high school his leadership
aspirations. At the high school, Lawton was forced to choose between class president and
student council president. He chose student council president. Richard Tolbert filled the
class presidency, and both Lawton and Tolbert were selected as Victor Wilson Scholars and
subsequently had the opportunity to attend Yale University. Tolbert did, in fact, attend Yale,
9
Ibid.
Martin Mayer, “The Good Slum Schools,” Harper’s Magazine (April 1961), 46-52, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, SC 73; “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City,” Time Magazine (July 1961) 78, no. 4,
38, Missouri Valley Special Collections, SC 73.
10
11
Martin Mayer, “The Good Slum Schools.”
114
but Lawton, as a result of family obligations, never made it to New Haven, instead staying
close to home and attending Kansas City University. Upon graduating from college, Lawton
spent thirty-four successful years with the juvenile justice system from 1968 to 2002; he
describes his time at Central High School as formative, shaping him into the person he has
become. Lawton credits his former Central teachers for his accomplishments, most notably a
teacher by the name of Dr. Jeremiah Cameron.12
Dr. Cameron, Lawton’s memorable English teacher, was also recalled by Stewart,
and, interestingly, was highlighted in the Harper’s article, “The Good Slum Schools.” In the
article, Dr. Cameron was described as “handsome” and “athletic,” wearing a “white shirt
and tie under a half-zippered Eisenhower jacket.”13 Dr. Cameron eventually came to be
known as the “dean of Kansas City’s black intellectuals,” having had a successful career as
both a social critic and educator.14 Stewart described Dr. Cameron as “exceptional”:
Dr. Jeremiah Cameron was my English teacher. He was the roughest, hardest teacher
I ever had in my life. He would embarrass us in front of everybody….He would use
words that we would have to go look up in the dictionary. Because, I mean his
vocabulary was that expansive.15
Like Stewart, Lawton remembered Dr. Cameron with great affection, claiming that
“Jeremiah Cameron…had a lot of impact on me.”16 Both Lawton and Stewart, however,
explained that Dr. Cameron was one of many teachers at Central who excelled. Stewart
12
Forestal Lawton, conversation with author, 7 November 2012.
13
Martin Mayer, “The Good Slum Schools.”
Mary Beveridge, “Biography of Jeremiah Cameron,” Kansas City Star, 2009, Missouri Valley Special
Collections.
14
15
Loretta Stewart, conversation with author, 2 November 2012.
16
Forestal Lawton, conversation with author, 7 November 2012.
115
claimed that many of her teachers, black and white alike, exhibited characteristics like those
of Dr. Cameron:
They [Teachers] were hard on us. They really pushed us….I never really had a
problem with my teachers. One reason being because by the time that I came around,
there were a good mix of instructors who were nonwhite, which makes a difference.
If somebody was not treating us fairly, we would go in and talk to the counselor, and
talk to the principal…and when you went to school, you were ready for it. There
were no excuses. No exceptions.17
Lawton, too, expressed regard for his black and white teachers:
With the black and white teachers, there was a lot of stress towards being
academically prepared, and so…that was another big influence on me. We had a lot
of students who had college scholarships. Went off to college and things of that
nature. So high school was really a very positive experience for me. Like I said, I
attribute some of the things that I have accomplished in life to the background that I
had at Central.
Central students found success in large part because of the quality teachers that Lawton and
Stewart so affectionately described. “Central’s youngsters,” the Time article suggested, “are
marching not only into junior colleges but also to Yale, Smith, Vassar, Oberlin and
Chicago.”18
As a result of Central High School’s progressive reputation, it was selected as the
American Field Service host school for foreign exchange students in 1963. This was a
remarkable feat, considering that when Enzo Benedusi, Central’s first foreign exchange
student, arrived at Central in the fall of 1963, the school was nearly all-black. Benedusi, an
Italian, was white, and all of the foreign exchange students who attended Central between
1963 and 1969 were also white, which led one Central student, upon Benedusi’s departure in
1964, to remark:
17
Loretta Stewart, conversation with author, 2 November 2012.
18
“Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City.”
116
Enzo Benedusi has set a milestone in America. He was the first American Field
Service foreign student to be sent to a predominantly Negro school and live with a
Negro family in a Negro community without incident. Alongside of him Centralites
have proved that students recognize no racial barriers. Central has taken a great
initial step not only for Central but for all schools in the United States.19
White foreign exchange students from Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Denmark
succeeded Benedusi, and by all accounts the foreign exchange students held Central in high
esteem. Hans Jaeger, a foreign exchange student from Switzerland who arrived at Central
the year after Benedusi, stated that Central was a “great school” and that “the students are so
kind-hearted and friendly. They make you feel like you are one of them.”20 In 1969, Central
welcomed its first black foreign exchange student, Evans Awalime from Africa.21 It appears
that 1969 was the last year of the program at Central, as there is no mention of another
foreign exchange student after 1969. This, rather predictably, coincides with a period of time
in which Central’s public perception began to fall out of favor and media reports
characterizing Central as one of Kansas City’s dangerous and low-performing black schools
became commonplace.
A Growing Discontentment, 1964-1965
All was seemingly good at Central in the first half of the 1960s. Central’s students
were receiving more scholarships than ever before, including three who received National
Merit Scholarships in 1965.22 The school itself was the subject of articles in two national
magazines mentioned previously. Its principal, Mr. Boyd, was garnering national acclaim.
Central’s basketball team finished third in the state in 1964, and the track team went
19
Central Luminary, 8 May 1964, 5.
20
Central Luminary, 9 October 1964, 1.
21
Central Luminary, 26 September 1969, 1.
22
Central Luminary, 23 April 1965, 1.
117
undefeated and won state in 1965.23 All of the success led one Central student, Paulette
Jackson, to claim in 1964 that Central was a “boss” school and also enticed Mr. Boyd to
proudly announce in 1965 that “the student body of Central High School has gained national
recognition for its human relations, academic and athletic ability.”24
Yet, in spite of the many accomplishments, there were struggles. According to the
district’s report of faculty integration, in July of 1963, the same year that Central’s student
enrollment was ninety-nine percent black, white teachers began “pleading” for transfers
from both Central Junior High and Central High School, as well as Lincoln Junior High and
Lincoln High School. Additionally, the report stated that eleven black teachers would be
transferred from the junior high and high schools of Central and Lincoln, teachers who had
expressed no desire to be transferred. 25 Among the teachers transferred, particularly the
black teachers, were individuals who truly cared about Central High School and Central’s
students.
Meanwhile, Central High School’s student population was growing. Central’s
capacity in 1963 was 2,176; its enrollment was 2,273, and the district was estimating that
enrollment numbers would swell to 2,952 by 1967 and by 1972, to 3,736.26 The growing
number of Central students were all black. Such projections led proponents of desegregation
to begin to question the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s efforts toward integration.
23
Central Luminary, 20 February 1964, 7; 21 May 1965, 8.
24
Central Luminary, 20 February 1964, 7; 21 May 1965, 8.
25
Current and Proposed Status of Faculty Integration, 25 July 1963, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 311.
“Capacity Compared to Membership, Actual 1963, Estimated 1967 and 1972,” Office of the
Superintendent, Kansas City, Missouri School District (1963), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 313.
26
118
Angry patrons of the district, a committee representing the Paseo, Southeast, Central and
Manual areas, appeared before the Kansas City, Missouri School District Board of
Education in June of 1963 to protest boundary changes, which the committee alleged
“followed the unwritten law that Troost be the boundary separating the white population and
Negro population.”27 Such apprehension led to a 1965 article in the Kansas City Star, “A
Danger of School Resegregation Grows,” which suggested that “school systems in many
northern and border cities—the two Kansas Cities included—are in danger of becoming
resegregated Negro school systems.”28 Central was indeed resegregated by 1965, and so too
were other Kansas City, Missouri School District schools. Central was no longer the city’s
de jure all-white school. Rather, by 1965, Central had become one of the city’s all-black
high schools, with black students comprising 99.4 percent of the student population.29 The
other majority black high schools in 1965 included Lincoln at 99.9 percent and Paseo at 62.4
percent. 30 The high schools’ feeder schools, too, were resegregated. The schools of the
Kansas City, Missouri School District were beginning to follow a predictable pattern that
became more pronounced over time: the vast majority of schools east of Troost were
majority black, and schools west of Troost were primarily white. So despite the destruction
of Kansas City, Missouri’s, dual school system, the Kansas City, Missouri School District,
just ten years after Brown, had become firmly resegregated. As a result, many, especially in
the black community, began to question the district’s efforts toward desegregation.
Kansas City, Missouri School District Board Minutes (1963), State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 313.
27
“A Danger of School Resegregation Grows,” Kansas City Star, 27 October 1965, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Schools-Public.
28
29
30
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-55—1983-1984.
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development,101.
119
It is important to remember that Missouri’s history is rooted in separate but equal,
especially in schooling. Though public accommodations were never mandated separate, they
were customarily so. As late as 1960, the Missouri Commission on Human Rights stated:
The problems of human rights for minority groups in Missouri reside today in the
area of rights not specifically delineated in constitutional, legislative or judicial
provisions, i.e., the right of equality of opportunity in the obtaining of employment,
upgrading and promotion on the job; specialized education apprenticeship training,
public accommodations, housing, health and welfare facilities, recreation and
entertainment31
Blacks were largely prohibited in the majority of Missouri hotels, motels, resorts,
restaurants, dining rooms, cafes, soda fountains, and drug store and department store eating
facilities: “In most cases a Negro may order food to take out but refused permission to eat on
the premises. In a number of counties, a Negro can be served food in the kitchen, a back
room, or in screened off area.”32 Thus, it was not uncommon for a black family travelling
from Kansas City to St. Louis to struggle to find a single café, restaurant, hotel, motel, or
resort to accommodate them, a result of the fact that there were no state laws in Missouri
prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations, at least not until the Public
Accommodations Law of 1964. The Public Accommodations Law was part of the broadest
and strongest civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Less than a year after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, on July 2,
1964, the Civil Rights Act secured passage.33 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited
segregation and other forms of discrimination in public accommodations, barred segregation
Study of Human Rights in Missouri, Missouri Commission on Human Rights (1960), State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 312, 1.
31
32
Ibid.
33
Michael Levine, African Americans and Civil Rights.
120
in state and locally owned facilities, and gave the attorney general new powers to end school
desegregation.34 Perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided the
attorney general the power to withhold federal funds from segregated school systems.35
It was widely assumed in the South that the Civil Rights Act would cause the general
destruction of education. Considering that as late as 1965 only two percent of black students
were enrolled with white students in the public schools of the Deep South, the carrot-andstick philosophy of the Civil Rights Act was most certainly designed to force the South to
finally desegregate, and in parts of the South it worked quite well.36 By 1966, the largest
percentage of black pupils attending school with white pupils was occurring in Texas,
Tennessee, and Virginia, Southern states.37 But not all Southern states were models of
compliance. South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana all initially used
freedom of choice plans as a way of avoiding meaningful desegregation, though such a
tactic was outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1968, thus paving the way for greater progress
throughout the South. But in Border States, such as Missouri, desegregation proved elusive,
as described in United States Commissioner of Education Harold Howe’s letter in 1967:
In addition to the problem of dual school systems, other forms of discrimination may
arise in the northern school situation. We are precluded by the language of the Civil
Rights Act and by amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
from dealing with the massive problems of segregation resulting from housing
patterns (so called ‘racial imbalance’), but there are additional problems, such as
gerrymandered school boundaries, racially determined teacher assignments, and
34
Ibid.
35
Forrest Carson to Superintendent of Public Schools (20 March 1968), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315.
Revisions to Title VI, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (February 1966), State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315.
36
Enrollment of Negro Pupils in Southern and Border States, Office of Education (December 1966), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
37
121
many inequalities in the educational programs that may constitute violations of Title
VI.38
Kansas City, Missouri School District leaders, in fact, routinely suggested that resegregation
was a result of residential segregation. While this is most certainly true, it is also clear that
the Kansas City, Missouri School District engaged in practices, as referenced by Howe, such
as gerrymandering of school boundaries, racially determined teacher assignments, and
inequalities in educational program and course offerings, that contributed significantly to the
separation of the races in schools. Eventually, the Kansas City, Missouri School District
would fall under the watchful eye of the Office of Civil Rights, but they first would have to
answer to the increasingly vocal and numerous local civil rights groups whose collective
frustration with Superintendent Hazlett and the Kansas City, Missouri School District Board
of Education was growing louder.
In August of 1964, the Citizens Coordinating Committee (CCC) was formulated with
representation from all major civil rights groups, and it became one of the most influential
and outspoken critics of Kansas City, Missouri School District efforts toward
desegregation.39 But it was the Kansas City chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) that initiated efforts to effect change in the Kansas City, Missouri School District
with their march to protest resegregation on July 2, 1963.40 It was at the March that Dr.
Robert Farnsworth, Chairman of Kansas City’s chapter of CORE, succinctly explained, not
Harold Howe, U.S. Commissioner of Education, to Phil Landrum, House of Representatives (5 April
1967), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
38
Thelma King, Council for United Action, to T. Johnson (23 June 1967), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
39
Statement by the Kansas City, Missouri School District Board of Education (July 1963), State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 313.
40
122
only what his organization stood for, but what many in the black community were feeling at
the time:
We feel that the school Board of Kansas City, Missouri, has failed to comply with
the Supreme Court decision of 1954. The School Board of Kansas City has not
actively attempted to undo a history of wrong committed against the Negro citizens
of this community. The School Board has not actively planned to provide integrated
educational experiences wherever possible. On the contrary, the School Board has
acted tardily and grudgingly to permit integration in some instances, but seldom to
foster it. Since the Supreme Court decision we have frequently seen white students,
in wholesale numbers, permitted to transfer out of integrated schools, thus creating
resegregated schools. New school construction has not been planned with the
Supreme Court’s decision in mind. Boundaries have been shifted…and, in many
cases, the boundary changes have clearly worked against the Supreme Court’s ruling.
There has been only token integration of the faculties. There are no Negroes in
central administrative positions which affect the problem areas I have just
mentioned….Classes of Negro children are bussed from the Ladd School to the
Humboldt School but are not permitted to join in the integrated activities of the
school. We have walked the parade route here to demonstrate publicly our concern
for these problems.41
In particular, it was the busing of black students to white schools and their treatment and
total segregation within those schools that seemed to elicit much emotion from both blacks
and whites alike.
As early as 1960, parents of Ladd Elementary School were calling for a new building
to alleviate crowded conditions. With the school well beyond capacity, even cloakrooms
were being used as classrooms.42 A new building would have to wait, as the district’s
solution to the overcrowded nature of its majority black schools in the central city was to
bus black pupils to white schools. Busing, however, did not equate to integration. By 1964,
the Kansas City, Missouri School District was busing 1,300 black students from
overcrowded black schools to under-utilized white schools and in nearly all cases, the black
Transcript of Procedures, March to Protest Resegregation (July 1963), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 313.
41
42
“Citizens Want a New School,” Kansas City Times, 26 October 1960, 22.
123
students were kept separate from the receiving white students.43 The CCC took issue with
the district’s busing plan, citing the numerous deprivations that were experienced by bussed
black students.44 When Superintendent Hazlett finally succumbed to the demands of the
CCC and announced in October of 1964 that black students bussed to white schools would
be integrated within the receiving school, he faced considerable push-back from white
parents. It seems that white parents did not want their white children “mixed” with black
children, claiming that in other cities “white children from the homes of a higher cultural
level were retarded because of the slower learning of bussed-in pupils.”45 Ultimately, it was
white opposition to the busing of black students that resulted in the passage of a $17.5
million bond initiative to build three new elementary schools and a junior high school in the
Central High School area.46 It was the district’s construction plan, however, that would erupt
in controversy and widen a growing rift between the black community and the Kansas City,
Missouri School District.
43
“A School Wait on Race Issue,” Kansas City Times, 10 October 1964, 1-2.
44
Deprivations of bussed students cited by the CCC included the following: (1) required to be at their
sending school at least twenty minutes earlier than other pupils, often in winter months leaving during darkness
(2) loaded into buses and required to sit three to a seat and stand (3) denied opportunity to go home for a hot
lunch (4) deprived of opportunity to attend many of the cultural activities which are a part of the enrichment
program provided other pupils (5) subjected to total segregation from all activities of the school they attend and
do not play, eat, or participate in normal regular activities with the school’s other pupils (6) teacher of bussed
pupil is required to utilize her time and energy to assume additional responsibilities for supervision during
recess, lunch, and transportation (7) full responsibility of bussed pupils remains vested in the principal of the
sending school (8) parent of bussed pupil who does not have transportation is severely handicapped in visiting
child and classroom (“Report to the Kansas City, Missouri Board of Education,” Citizens Coordinating
Committee, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 313).
“School Parents Disturbed by Integration Move,” The Wednesday Magazine (September 1965), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314, 12.
45
46
Patricia Doyle, “For Education 3 to 1,” Kansas City Times, February 1965, 1-2.
124
Havighurst and the Middle School Controversy, 1965-1968
“My people are ready to die for the middle school,” said one black individual at a
public meeting in 1967.47 Indeed, the middle school controversy that unfolded between 1965
and 1967 aroused a certain passion that dichotomized supporters of the middle school from
those in opposition to it, which largely fell along racial lines. Upon passage of the school
bond issue in 1965, Superintendent Hazlett immediately began planning and selling the
construction of three elementary schools in the congested area around Central High School.
By 1965, the elementary schools in the Central High School area were “critically
overcrowded” with approximately 1,700 elementary pupils being bussed out during the
1965-1966 school year.48 The district estimated in 1965 that the elementary overload in the
Central High School area would increase to over four thousand by 1967 and well over six
thousand by 1969.49 Not all schools were similarly overcrowded. In fact, the Central High
School area was the only “severely overloaded” attendance area at the time, as it was
estimated that there were roughly eight thousand available spaces in Kansas City elementary
schools in other parts of the district.50 As such, it was clear that something needed to be done
to relieve the overcrowding; the issue was whether the construction of three new elementary
schools in the Central High School area was the best approach.
Rex Stout and John King, “Background Information on the Problems of Overcrowding and Integration in
the Kansas City, Missouri District, League of Women Voters of Kansas City,” Missouri (September 1967),
State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
47
Some Questions and Answers: Regarding Citizens Coordinating Committee Policy, Citizens
Coordinating Committee (July 1965), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
48
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
125
Despite Superintendent Hazlett’s assurance in 1965 to a group of parents that the
work to build three new elementary schools was “proceeding rapidly,” Kansas City’s local
civil rights organizations were growing increasingly concerned about the district’s
construction plan. In July of 1965, the Citizen’s Coordinating Committee told Hazlett that it
could not endorse the three school sites where the district board of education had planned to
construct the new schools.51 Thus, an already precarious relationship between
Superintendent Hazlett and Kansas City’s civil rights organizations grew even more
strained. Hazlett stated that he was “taken aback” by the CCC’s opposition to the school
sites, claiming that they had reversed their position. The CCC, conversely, denied any
reversal, suggesting that they never said they would support or oppose the sites.52 The CCC
had come to the conclusion that the plan outlined by the district would offer no substantial
relief and would only represent a continuation of existing patterns of segregation in Kansas
City:
We are appalled that the public statements emitting from the superintendent’s office
persist in the claim that an end to bussing will come after the new schools are opened
in 1967 when, in fact, the figures compiled by their office show an expectation of
drastically increased over-crowding. This appears to be deliberate deception and
distortion in fact.53
The CCC subsequently began calling for consultants with expert knowledge in the area of
urban schooling and planning to be hired to assess the situation in Kansas City, Missouri. In
September of 1965, the CCC and the Kansas City, Missouri Board of Education reached a
consensus in which the board agreed to suspend all building activities until after a study was
51
“Coordinating Committee Opposes School Sites,” Kansas City Call, 9 June 1965, State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
52
Ibid.
Citizen’s Coordinating Committee memo to James Hazlett (n.d.), State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315.
53
126
conducted by three outside consultants led by Dr. Robert Havighurst, who was selected as
lead consultant in Kansas City for his work with the Chicago Public School system, where
he conducted a similar study in 1964.54
Dr. Havighurst, along with Dr. William Cobb and Dr. Norman Drachler, released
their report, Problems of Integration in the Kansas City Public Schools, in November of
1965, in which they listed a variety of recommendations. Havighurst’s Kansas City study
included several major recommendations that took into consideration the fact that the
overcrowded nature of black neighborhoods was about to push into the upper grades and
secondary schools. Consequently, the primary recommendations included the following: five
or six sites for a junior high school as a way of achieving some “racial mixing”; a new
senior high school in the Manual area; additional educational services given to the Paseo
High School and its surrounding elementary schools to help preserve integration; the
appointment of a director of community relations; greater faculty integration; attention to
issues of student transfers and busing; and the abandonment of the school district’s plan to
build a de facto segregated elementary school at Fortieth and Park Avenue and instead
construct an integrated middle school in the area of Brush Creek Boulevard and the Paseo.55
Paseo became the critical area and school because the racial change in 1965 was not
occurring as quickly in the Paseo area as it had in and around Central High School.56 The
proposed middle school became the foremost issue for local civil rights groups who were
fighting for meaningful integration in the Kansas City, Missouri School District, while it
54
“New Site Study for 3 Schools,” Kansas City Times, 31 July 1965, 1-2.
Robert Havighurst, William Cobb, and Norman Drachler, “Problems of Integration in the Kansas City
Public Schools” (November 1965), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 514.
55
“Rise in Negro Pupils,” Kansas City Times, 27 October 1965, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314.
56
127
also came to symbolize the board of education and Superintendent Hazlett’s indifference to
it.
Superintendent Hazlett gave some indication of his thoughts on the integrated middle
school in August of 1965, when he stated:
There is no evidence that quality education can only be achieved by classroom
integration. There can be quality education in all-white or all-Negro schools and poor
education in integrated schools. Quality education depends on smaller classes, good
teaching, high motivation, adequate equipment and supplies. This does not deny the
existence of positive values in integrated learning situations but to organize the
educational system on the single criterion of integration is questionable57
Civil rights groups and advocates of school integration, however, viewed the proposed
middle school as a key element in the maintenance of a prosperous integrated neighborhood
that resided in one of the most attractive residential neighborhoods of Kansas City. Part of
the desirability was the concept of a middle school, which in 1965 was a new and innovative
approach to education.
Although definitions vary, the middle school generally is defined as a school with
any combination of grades between three and eight…Essentially, this nation-wide
search for better ways to organize—or reorganize—education between the primary
grades on the one hand and the senior high school on the other is part of a much
larger ferment in American education.58
Havighurst himself recognized the middle school as “one of the most attractive innovations
in American education” and viewed its use as critical in supporting integration. The
advantage of the middle school, Havighurst explained, was the size and scope of the
neighborhood. Speaking of middle schools, he stated, “the natural neighborhood” was
James Hazlett to the Board of Education (19 August 1965), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur
A. Benson II, Box 315.
57
Robert Havighurst and Daniel Levine, “The Feasibility of Maintaining Integration in the Proposed
Middle School” (April 1967), Missouri Valley Special Collections, James A Hazlett Papers,8.
58
128
“larger than the natural neighborhood of a primary school.”59 It was reasoned, therefore, that
a middle school at Brush Creek and Paseo, pulling from a larger pool of pupils residing in
both black and white neighborhoods, would result in a stable integrated school and relieve
overcrowding.
Upon release of the Havighurst Report, local civil rights groups immediately
supported it. Superintendent Hazlett, however, was not convinced, stating that the
recommended middle school “pays temporary homage to integration.”60 Hazlett’s statements
indicated that he assumed that the balanced enrollment that Havighurst projected was
inaccurate. Moreover, Hazlett questioned the cost of the middle school project. In 1967,
Hazlett made his recommendation to the Kansas City, Missouri School District Board of
Education concerning the construction of a middle school in the vicinity of Brush Creek and
Paseo; he said:
Charged with responsibility of as prudent management of funds as possible, I cannot
recommend this school simply because we do not have the money to build it without
materially affecting other sorely needed projects which were a part of the original
building plan…The construction of a middle school from a practical standpoint,
therefore, becomes academic. True, land could be acquired and construction delayed
until money is available in another bond issue but I cannot propose doing this
because of the pressing need to take care of overcrowding and to finish other projects
subjected to increasing costs.61
Not surprisingly, civil rights groups scoffed at Hazlett’s statement and were further angered
by his recommendation that the district pursue an “appraisal of the best use of funds
allocated for the third elementary school, either to build the school or redeploy to build
59
Havighurst, Cobb, and Drachler, “Problems of Integration in the Kansas City Public Schools.”
James Hazlett to the Board of Education (14 June, 1967), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 315.
60
61
Ibid.
129
space elsewhere.”62 Having positioned themselves firmly behind the integrated middle
school recommended in the Havighurst Report, Kansas City’s civil rights groups,
particularly the CCC and the Council for United Action (CUA), stood vehemently in
opposition to another elementary school built in the inner-city that would only contribute to
the segregated nature of the school district.
Ms. Thelma King of the CUA, in particular, became an outspoken critic of
Superintendent Hazlett’s policies regarding desegregation. She was angered by his decision
against the middle school. In July of 1967, King addressed the school board:
It should be clearly understood that the middle school is but a part of a much larger
problem which reflects the failure of our present system of education to provide
quality education for all children within the Kansas City School District. It should
also be understood that the Council for United Action will not participate in any
trading or “dealing” with this board or its superintendent based solely on the question
of whether or not a middle school is to be built or not….The board should clearly
understand that we will no longer “compromise” the future of our children.
Specifically, we are asking this board, not only to meet its commitment to provide
quality integrated education by building the middle school—but to provide a master
plan for the integration of all schools in the Kansas City School District.63
Charging a betrayal of trust, King and the CUA did not stop at the school board. Following
Hazlett’s decision and the school board’s three-to-two vote in support of the superintendent,
the CUA threatened a federal investigation of segregation practices in the public schools of
Kansas City, Missouri.64 In addition, Dr. Carleton Scofield, Chancellor Emeritus at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City, resigned his position as Chairman of the Citizens
62
Ibid.
Thelma King, “Statement to Board of Education” (6 July 1967), Missouri Valley Special Collections,
James A Hazlett Papers.
63
64
Stout and King, “Background Information on the Problems of Overcrowding and Integration.”
130
Advisory Committee to the Kansas City Public School administration in a sharp break with
Superintendent Hazlett concerning integration:
I am afraid that I cannot conscientiously serve in an advisory capacity to a
philosophy in the 20th century education that states with considerable degree of
firmness that the notion that only integrated education can make for quality
education is a myth that needs to be exploded.65
On June 23, 1967, Thelma King, in a letter to the Office of Civil Rights, submitted a formal
request for an investigation of the Kansas City, Missouri School District, and by June 30,
1967, a team of investigators were en route to Kansas City.66
A federal team of eight Office of Civil Rights (OCR) educational specialists
dissected the Kansas City, Missouri School District between July 17th and July 21st in order
to determine if the school district was in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,
which required school systems receiving federal aid to operate without racial discrimination
or segregation.67 The investigators examined, in particular, teacher and administration
recruitment, transfer, and promotion, course offerings, and student transfers. Their findings
were troubling.
The investigation team discovered that twenty-four Kansas City, Missouri School
District schools’ faculties were all white, and ten were entirely black. Moreover, teachers in
1967 signed open contracts whereby the district would hire a teacher and then place them.
Eighty-one percent of the black teachers for the 1967-1968 school year had been assigned to
65
Ibid.
66
Thelma King to T. Johnson, Office of Civil Rights (23 June 1967), State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 314; Theron Johnson, Special Assistant to the Assistant Commissioner to Dr.
Holloway, Acting Chief Title IV (30 June 1967), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box 314.
Harold Williams memo to Theron Johnson, 12 July 1967, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 314.
67
131
majority black schools, while seventy-eight percent of the white teachers had been assigned
to majority white schools. Similarly, ninety-one percent of white teacher transfers did so to
majority white schools, and eighty-two percent of black teachers went to black schools. The
district claimed that a policy of forced transfer would result in wholesale resignations. With
regard to the administration, the federal investigators suggested “no area of the Kansas City,
Missouri School District situation reflects more tellingly its tradition as a dual school system
than its allocation of administration. Negro Administration, it appears, are assigned to
exclusively Negro schools.” Indeed, in 1967, there were no black principals at schools
where black students comprised less than ninety-seven percent of the student body, and
there were no black head principals at any of the district high schools. Students, they found,
were given a battery of tests at the conclusion of their eighth grade year to determine their
ability group and subsequently classified as A, B, or C level. Determinations were made
based largely on achievement and teacher recommendations, and it was concluded that the
process and the tracking were not done in an equitable manner. Manual High School, for
example, roughly all-black by 1967, had no A or B level students and did not offer a single
advanced class. Considering student transfers, the investigators explained that if a pupil
wanted to transfer, a parent called the board and asked for a list of open schools; no
requested applications, they noted, were investigated by the school district.68 In conclusion,
the federal team of investigators stated: “It is undeniable that the graduates of Negro schools
in the Kansas City, Missouri system are at an inferior educational level.”69
Ibid; Parul Fairly and Gerald Sroufe, “Review of Kansas City, Missouri Schools” (1967), State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315.
68
Karen Krueger, “Preliminary Review of the Kansas City, Missouri Schools, July 17-21, 1967,
Curriculum, Pupil Assignment and Transfer.” State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers,
Box 315.
69
132
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) sent a different team of
investigators to Kansas City in early March of 1968 and found that little had changed since
their previous visit roughly eight months before. It must have been clear to Superintendent
Hazlett and the board of education that the Kansas City, Missouri School District had caught
the eye of federal investigators. It most certainly came as no surprise, considering that Title
VI enforcement had begun pushing north and west late in 1967. The Border States,
therefore, would come under heavy scrutiny for years to follow, including Kansas City,
Missouri. Hazlett surely anticipated as much, especially in light of the fact that federal
investigators had made two trips to Kansas City in less than a year by spring of 1968. It is
little wonder, then, that Hazlett released his own plan for desegregation “Concepts for
Changing Times” in the aftermath of the middle school controversy, 70 The plan
coincidentally was released to the public just days after the federal investigators had
departed Kansas City for a second time. It dealt with pupil integration at the elementary and
secondary levels, faculty integration, and curriculum. Hazlett suggested clustering and
pairing of elementary schools; creation of magnet secondary schools in vocational-technical,
performing and fine arts, and science; revision of teacher and principal assignment policy;
and a broadening of the curriculum to include pluralistic viewpoints.71 Having laid out his
vision, Hazlett set out to establish a so-called “council of thirty,” consisting of civil rights
organizations, business and real estate groups, organized labor, teacher organizations, PTA
representatives, and other citizen bodies. Superintendent Hazlett had already established a
“Concepts for Changing Times: Proposals Offered for Public Examination, Dealing with Educational
Equity in the Kansas City, Missouri, School District,” Office of the Superintendent, The School District of
Kansas City, Missouri (March 1968), Missouri Valley Special Collections, James A Hazlett Papers.
70
71
Ibid.
133
reputation among civil rights groups as anti-integration, and it was unlikely that his vision
for the future would be welcomed by those who had already lost trust in his leadership. His
fate was all but sealed with the district’s mishandling of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
funeral service on April 9, 1968, and the events that unfolded in its aftermath.
The Riot of 1968
The morning of Tuesday April 9, 1968, Al Brooks was at the Grace and Holy
Temple Cathedral. Brooks, who was a longtime community activist, had worked in law
enforcement for years, but in April of 1968 Brooks, ironically, was working for the Kansas
City, Missouri School District coordinating efforts involving Title I programming with
parents and schools. Sitting among the congregation on Tuesday morning, Brooks
remembered how his day was interrupted by an emergency phone call: “They hand him
[minister] a note, and he says ‘Is Al Brooks in the congregation?’ I said ‘yes.’ He said, ‘You
have an emergency call.’ That was the call that three schools had walked out.”72 The
walkout included the majority of students at Manual High School, Lincoln High School, and
Central High School, as well as many students at Paseo High School, Southeast High
School, and Westport High School.73 The students were angered by the manner in which the
district had handled the events of April 9, 1968, the funeral service for Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. But it was clear that the student walkout ran deeper than what it seemed on the
surface. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral service was the initial spark, yet the riots that
subsequently enveloped the community were a result of longstanding inequalities, many of
which involved the Kansas City, Missouri School District.
72
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
73
Ibid.
134
The Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder, completed in August of 1968,
explained that the precipitating causes of the April riots were the “existence of conditions
that produce and increase tensions, unrest and frustrations in the Negro community, and
which result in the emotional climate which is necessary before a riot can occur.”74 As the
commission suggested, the failure of the district to act on the Havighurst Report was a
matter of which the black community was “acutely aware.”75 Moreover, there were several
incidents that may have been a prelude to April 9, 1968. One incident, in particular, occurred
at Central High School and involved both students and non-students. In November of 1967,
a disturbance broke out that ended with the involvement of thirty-five policemen. Before it
was over, bottles and rocks were hurled at police officers and their cars; police made twelve
arrests. The Kansas City Times covered the incident, reporting that “[t]hree seventeen-yearold boys and nine juveniles were arrested yesterday afternoon following a second day of
disturbances outside Central High School, 3221 Indiana.”76 There already existed a history
of complaints within the black community against the police department for their treatment
of black residents. Most generally, there was a feeling that Kansas City’s white residents
favored discrimination against blacks, and the nominal support that the white community
gave to the 1964 Public Accommodations Law, specifically, was viewed as evidence of the
feeling.77
74
“Final Report: Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder” Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder (August
1968), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 514, 3.
75
Ibid., 6.
“Arrest Twelve Youths in Disturbance,” Kansas City Times, 11 November 1967, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
76
77
“Final Report: Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder,” 5.
135
On Friday, April 5, the day after the assassination of Dr. King, the Kansas City,
Missouri School District lowered the schools’ flags to half-mast and reported that all was
quiet; there appeared to be no indication of trouble. Meanwhile, on the Kansas side of state
line, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the Kansas City, Kansas School
District was busy assisting in a planned student march that would be accompanied by black
police officers, as well as local clergy and the city’s mayor.78 No such march was planned
by Kansas City, Missouri School District leadership. In fact, Superintendent Hazlett left for
Washington D.C. on Sunday, April 7 to fulfill his duties as chairman of an advisory
committee. Before he left, however, Hazlett announced that school was to be held on
Tuesday but that a one-minute moment of silence was to take place in honor of Dr. King.79
The same day that Hazlett announced Kansas City, Missouri, would hold classes on
Tuesday, the Kansas City, Kansas School District announced that schools would be closed, a
result of pressure from civil rights groups. At 7:30 a.m. on April 9, the Kansas City public
radio station announced open and closed schools, and almost immediately upon hearing that
school was open in Kansas City, Missouri, students planned a walkout from Lincoln High
School, intending to walk to Central High School.80
J. Anthony Snorgrass, a sophomore at Central High School in the spring of 1968,
vividly recalled the evening of April 9, the day the riots began:
I do remember leaving school…and things were bubbling, and then getting off work
coming back home it suddenly hit pretty hot and heavy. I remember that night, I
remember…there was a post office, Gates, and my barber shop; it must have been
78
Ibid., 9.
79
Ibid., 10.
80
Ibid., 12-13.
136
Twenty-Seventh and Indiana back towards the school. I remember seeing all that in
flames. I remember, you know, chaos, mass chaos.81
In the beginning, though a few cars were overturned and windows broken, the student
walkout was mostly peaceful. Al Brooks joined the student protest and marched with them
to the steps of City Hall, where he and others addressed the crowd. But as Brooks explained,
things suddenly turned violent: “Somebody had thrown a Coca-Cola bottle at the feet of the
police officer directing traffic at Twelfth and Oak, and that’s when the tear gas gets thrown.
And the city manager and I hit the ground.”82 The scene was, as Brooks described,
“mayhem.”83 There was a report of a priest being struck by a patrolman and another priest,
who was coming to the downed priest’s aid, being pushed off his feet and overcome by tear
gas.84 Later that day, many of the student protesters reconvened at Holy Name Catholic
Church around Twenty-Third and Benton. The church was a gathering spot for teens, a safe
place for them to hang out on Friday and Saturday nights.85 As the students proceeded to the
basement of the church for a dance on Tuesday evening, April 9, police used tear gas both
outside and inside of the church. Eight canisters of tear gas were found in the Church.86 The
mood changed to anger. By Wednesday morning, April 10, ninety-four fires had been set
81
J. Anthony Snorgrass, conversation with author, 20 February 2013.
82
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
83
Ibid.
84
“Final Report: Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder,” 20.
85
Alvin Brooks, conversation with author, 31 October 2012.
86
“Final Report: Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder,” 23.
137
and extensive looting had taken place—nine people were wounded and one person was
killed.87
By dawn on Thursday, April 11, 1968, the riots were over, but not before the death
of six people, all of them black, and another thirty-six wounded. Ninety-eight arson fires
were set in the predominately African-American eastside neighborhoods, and 312 buildings
were damaged at an estimated cost of nearly one million dollars.88 Those among the dead
were Maynard Gough; Charles Martin; George McKinney and his son George McKinney,
Jr.; Julius Preston Hamilton; and Albert Miller.89 Four of the individuals had been killed by
police officers, and two had been shot by unknown persons. Many in the black community
were angered by the way the police handled the situation, which was covered in a Kansas
City Star article, “Negroes Still Angry at Police”:
The Negro community, following the disturbances here, has never been more united
in its opposition to the police. While the police are a constant point of friction in
almost every lower income black community, police-community relations in the
inner-city area have been suffered immeasurably.90
Moreover, several black parents suggested that they could never forgive the police for their
use of gas at Holy Name Catholic Church, as well as Central High School and Lincoln High
School.91 There was certainly a sense of anger and betrayal that pervaded the black
community following the riots. Harold Holiday, a Missouri state representative, claimed that
the riot solidified the belief among blacks that there was “one standard of conduct
87
Ibid., 25.
88
“Police, Fireman, and Guardsmen Praised for Riot Performance,” Kansas City Star, 5 May 1968, 1.
89
“Final Report: Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder.”
90
“Negroes Still Angry at Police,” Kansas City Star, 5 May 1968, 15A.
91
Ibid.
138
permissible for whites and another one for blacks.”92 The riots had an enduring impact on
both the eastside neighborhoods and the schools.
A report released in 1971 by the city’s Human Relations Task Force suggested that
the civil disorder of 1968 was “undeniably the most spectacular display of frustration and
anger on the part of black residents of Kansas City.”93 The report also stated the following:
Today, most persons would concede that the disorder was a culmination of many
hints and clues to which we failed—or refused—to respond, or to even see and hear.
Yet, there are disturbing signs that already we are forgetting the lesson; a line of
reasoning that goes something like, “It’s been three years…no more riots…we’ve
made progress…” could readily lull us into a sense of false security…To the extent
that change had not occurred, racism has been the primary impediment.94
While reasons ascribed to the “volatile emotional state of tension and frustration” included
lack of job opportunities, longstanding problems with the police, and frustrations in housing,
at the center were problems of educational inequality that had become readily apparent by
the late 1960s.
In 1969, a report by the Missouri School District Reorganization Commission
suggested a radical new approach to public education: “While a sensible school district
pattern alone will not cure all of the afflictions of the educational system, little progress can
be expected without it.”95 A “tempting solution,” it was suggested, to the problems of
equality of education and racial integration was the creation of one school district in
metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis. Interestingly, Superintendent Hazlett had been
92
Ibid.
93
“Three Year Report: The Quality of Urban Life,” Human Relations Task Force on Civil Disorder
(October 1971), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 514.
94
Ibid., 7.
“Equal Treatment to Equals: A New Structure for Public Schools in the Kansas City and St. Louis
Metropolitan Areas,” Missouri School District Reorganization Commission (June 1969), State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315, 1.
95
139
championing such an approach since the early 1960s and specifically highlighted a similar
approach in “Concepts for Changing Times,” in which he wrote:
Any master plan for integration depends on geographic and population
characteristics of the community to be served, and the plan must be adapted to those
characteristics. The Kansas City School District is 80 square miles in area—only
one-fourth the size of the city and a much smaller part of the metropolitan area. It is
one of 17 public school districts that furnish educational services to the city. Yet it is
the only district in the Missouri part of the metropolitan area that has important
problems in integration.96
Superintendent Hazlett was correct in his assertion that the problems of integration
and geography were, in the Kansas City metropolitan area, unique to the Kansas City,
Missouri School District. But it is also true that the district’s track record throughout the
1960s revealed a certain reluctance to embrace meaningful desegregation. Among the most
obvious examples of the district’s lukewarm approach to desegregation included a lenient
transfer policy, reluctance to hire black administrators and teachers, and a stringent reliance
on a neighborhood concept in the face of hardening residential segregation. Superintendent
Hazlett eventually succumbed to the pressures of civil rights groups who were calling for his
resignation, announcing his departure on June 5, 1969.97 The Kansas City, Missouri School
District was not doing enough to integrate its schools, and the issue, which began to attract
federal interest in the late 1960s after the middle school controversy, would become
particularly acute in the 1970s.
“Concepts for Changing Times,” The Office of the Superintendent (March 1968), Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Hazlett Papers.
96
James Hazlett to the Board of Directors (18 July 1969), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box 315.
97
140
CHAPTER 6
DESEGREGATION AVERTED: THE ONGOING
STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY, 1968-1977
Kansas City’s Southeast Side, 1968-1970
A 1970 report, Public Schools of the Southeast Side, was released to allay fears that
the southeast corridor schools were diminishing in quality. The report professes a certain
cautious optimism that the district’s reading clinics, vocational and technical education, and
school facilities would maintain the high standards established in southeast schools in
previous years:
With both increases and changes in population, parents often become concerned
about a possible “watering-down” of their children’s education. But parents are not
alone in this concern. The new programs and technical equipment described earlier
in this booklet are but a few of the attempts made by school personnel in the public
schools of the Southeast side to maintain the high quality of education which has
been characteristic of these schools.1
Nonetheless, it was apparent by 1970 that little could be done to keep whites in the southeast
area, regardless of the success of its schools. The trend was set. The southeast part of the
city had already undergone a significant demographic shift, and the collective efforts of the
real estate industry, the banking industry, and local, state, and federal housing policies were
only contributing to greater flight.
Two high schools of the southeast side, in particular, Central High School and
Southeast High School, serve as a lens through which neighborhood transformation in
Center for the Study of Metropolitan Problems in Education, UMKC, Public Schools of the Southeast
Side: A Report to the Community (Kansas City: University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1970).
1
141
Kansas City, Missouri, can be viewed. Central’s student population, by the end of the 1960s,
had been nearly all black for years, having gone from all white to all black between 1955
and 1962. Moreover, the neighborhoods around Central High School had undergone a rapid
demographic shift in the second half of the 1950s. Southeast High School, conversely, was
just shy of three percent black during the 1961-1962 school year, the same year that Central
High School was over ninety-seven percent black.2 By the 1968-1969 school year, Southeast
High School was nearly forty-three percent black, and by 1972-1973, it was almost ninetyseven percent black.3 Clearly the trend of white flight was in a southeasterly pattern, which
began in and around Twenty-Seventh Street and the Central High School attendance area,
advancing southeast from there. When the aforementioned report on the southeast side
schools was released in 1970, the area was at a critical juncture. Based on the demographic
data, it is clear that Southeast High School continued to lose white students very quickly,
going from fifty-nine percent black in 1969-70 to over ninety percent in 1971-1972.4 With
the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s continued reliance on a neighborhood
attendance policy into the 1970s, the schools served as a microcosm of the neighborhood
Proponents of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which extended protections of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination in employment and public education to the
sale and rental of housing, hoped that it would create opportunities for people of color.5
Thus, the Fair Housing Act attempted to respond directly to the harms caused by racial and
2
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
Rajiv Sethi and Rohini Somanathan, “Inequality and Segregation,” Journal of Political Economy 112, no.
6 (2004), 1296-1321.
5
142
social isolation upon individuals and communities.6 Oliver and Shapiro describe the process
as the “racialization of state policy,” where federal policies had historically impaired the
ability of African Americans to acquire land and generate wealth.7 Specifically, they argued
that the policies and actions of the United States government, including housing subsidy and
financing programs, had promoted home ownership, land acquisition, and wealth
accumulation for whites but not for blacks.8 The significance of the 1968 Fair Housing Act
was that it shifted the risk of financing inner-city housing to the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA), but the vast majority of new construction, as a result of the Fair
Housing Act, occurred in the suburbs and benefited whites, not blacks.9 Almost seventythree percent of the new construction financed through section 235 of the Fair Housing Act
occurred in the suburbs, and eighty percent of those participating were young white couples
with children. On the contrary, over ninety percent of those who purchased existing homes
as a result of the subsidy were black, and they were purchasing homes in all-black census
tracts.10 As such, the risk-free environment, a result of relaxed mortgage lending standards,
ushered in a second wave of realtors employing get-rich schemes. A Kansas City, Missouri,
resident described the process in a Kansas City Star article in August of 1972:
Very poor families were directed into the area by unscrupulous real estate brokers
who used the program to make money. They sold homes that were in bad repair.
Myron Orfield, “Segregation and Environmental Justice,” Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and
Technology 7, no. 1 (2005), 147-160.
6
7
Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth (New York: Routledge, 1995).
8
Ibid.
Kevin Gotham, “Separate and Unequal: The Housing Act of 1968 and the Section 235 Program,”
Sociological Forum 15, no. 1 (November 2000), 13-37.
9
10
Ibid.
143
They dropped poor people in there without guidance…Some of the homes
deteriorated, and the remaining Whites moved out.”11
Consequently, census data for both urban and suburban neighborhoods of Kansas City,
Missouri, reflected the changing residential patterns of the late 1960s and 1970s. Despite the
efforts of eastside coalition groups like Forty Nine-Sixty Three Neighborhood Coalition and
the Marlborough Heights Neighborhood Association, whites continued to make use of FHA
loans to resettle in the suburbs, and blacks continued to secure housing in the urban core,
thus reinforcing residential segregation.12
The growth of Kansas City’s metropolitan suburbs during the late 1960s and into the
1970s is evident on both sides of the state line and is reflected in 1970 census data.
Raytown, Missouri, for example, a suburb located just south of the city on the Missouri side
in Jackson County, almost doubled in size between 1960 and 1970: it grew from 17,083 to
33,306.13 Not surprisingly, of the 33,306 residents of Raytown in 1970, ninety-nine percent
were white. In Kansas, a similar trend was established and can be seen in population and
demographic data for Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb just southwest of Kansas City,
Missouri, in Johnson County. With a population of 28,085 in 1960, Overland Park’s
population grew tremendously and reached 77,934 by 1970, a population growth of almost
fifty thousand. Like Raytown, roughly ninety-nine percent of Overland Park residents were
white in 1970.14 The census tract around Central High School, by 1970, was 96.8 percent
11
Kansas City Star, 28 August 1972, 1.
12
Kansas City Star, 26 January 1971, 6A.
Raytown Planning and Zoning Commission, Raytown Comprehensive Plan (October 2002),
www.raytown.mo.us; United States Census (1970), www.socialexplorer.com.
13
Overland Park Planning and Development Services Department, Population Characteristics: 2011
Annual Development Report (March 2012), www.opkans.org; United States Census (1970),
www.socialexplorer.com.
14
144
black, which was an increase of nearly fifteen percent compared to census data from 1960.
Additionally, the percentage of vacant houses jumped to over fourteen percent in 1970, up
from four percent in 1960. Such data lends credence to the idea that the Fair Housing Act of
1968 and section 235 had a significant impact on neighborhoods like those surrounding
Central High School, as the population was by 1970 almost entirely black and, based on the
unemployment rate and number of vacant houses, less financially stable. As the Central
High School attendance area’s neighborhood dynamics changed, so too did the school’s
reputation. The dominant white view of the black inner-city schools was being advanced in
local Kansas City newspapers, especially in the Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times.
Falling out of Favor: Central High School’s Public Perception, 1970-1973
Central High School’s reputation began to decline in the late 1960s, but it was not
until 1970 that Central’s image came under siege. The first mention of Central’s declining
image occurred in the November 27, 1967 issue of the Luminary, when two teachers
addressed the Central student body and suggested that the image of Central was “slowly
coming to a down fall.”15 A student editorial by Joyce Eddy corroborated what her teachers
were saying:
Dear old Central, far famed Central, two weeks ago, we, as students of Central went
through one of the worst ordeals Central has ever been forced to tolerate. The great
name of Central was brought down to a point that it was disgraceful.16
The concern for Central’s image corresponds with a November 10 and November 11, 1967,
incident that occurred outside of Central High School and resulted in the arrest of twelve.17
15
Central Luminary, 24 November 1967, 1.
16
Ibid., 1.
17
“Arrest 12 Youths in Disturbance,” Kansas City Star, 11 November 1967.
145
Based on the report, three seventeen-year-olds were arrested and charged with creating a
public disturbance and throwing bottles and stones at police officers and equipment.18
Following the November incident and in response to claims that Central High School’s
reputation was eroding, senior class president, Mae Thompson, suggested that the media was
exaggerating the issue: “I truly believe that Central has become a victim of news
sensationalism. The news media is so anxious to get a story that they’ll blow up anything
and Central just provided the happenings.”19 Few at the time, in 1967, could have predicted
the accuracy of such a statement, but Thompson’s comments can be viewed in hindsight as a
strangely precise premonition.
After the November 1967 incident, Centralites seemed to situate themselves on the
defensive, which is understandable considering that nearly all of the media reports coming
out of Central thereafter were negative. There was a fight between two female students in
1968, which was followed by an altercation at a basketball game between Central and
Southeast High Schools, where one of Central’s star players, W. D. Roby, was arrested for
felonious assault of two referees.20 Following the two incidents, Deffanie Harris wrote a
student editorial claiming, “Central has a harder time upholding a good image than any other
school in the city….Many schools are jealous, jealous of our achievements….Let’s stand tall
and show them that Central is as great as we think it is.”21 The negative news continued,
however, as the Kansas City Star covered an incident that occurred in the spring of 1969.
18
Ibid.
19
Central Luminary, 24 November 1967, 1.
“Hold Youth in Tourney Fight,” Kansas City Star, 14 March 1969, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Public, Central High.
20
21
Central Luminary, 1 March 1968, 1.
146
Two Central students broke through a window and caused an estimated ten thousand dollars
in damage as they “tore through offices and classrooms on three floors, scattering and
destroying records and materials.”22 Subsequently, in May of 1969, the Kansas City Times
ran an article, “New Breed of Student at Central Aims to Change School’s Image” and
reported, “[T]here is a new breed of student at Central High School whose aim is to improve
the school’s image and create better student-teacher relationships.”23 Yet, Central High
School mathematics teacher, Charles Williams, claimed, “[T]his isn’t a bad school, although
Central has apparently picked up a bad reputation.”24 Indeed, local newspapers were littered
with negative articles about Central, and the damaging media reports seemed to be taking a
toll, as is evidenced by one student’s comments in the Central Luminary:
Central has a bad name in the surrounding community. Through the aid of the news
media, sporadic incidents that occur at Central or involve Centralites are blown out
of proportion and give our school a bad reputation. Those who do not attend Central
or are not associated with it in any way readily accept these news items as fact and
believe that the majority of those who attend Central are not assets to the community.
Is this true? Well of course not!25
The bad press did not relent; rather, it intensified and grew even more widespread
throughout the 1970s.
A February, 1970 article in the Kansas City Star stated that violence was the “most
immediate problem facing the Central High School and community.”26 The article was
22
“Vandals Rake Central High,” Kansas City Times, 24 February 1969, 1, 3.
23
“New Breed of Student at Central Aims to Change School’s Image,” Kansas City Times, 24 May 1969,
24
Ibid.
25
Central Luminary, 26 September 1969, 2.
3E.
“CHS Area Seeks Solutions to Violence,” Kansas City Star, 19 February 1970, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
26
147
preceded by an article in February 1970 detailing two separate “disturbances” at Central
High School, which ultimately led to the decision by the Kansas City, Missouri School
District Board of Education, just one day after the disturbance, to place armed guards within
Central High School:
Authorization by the Board of Education for security guards at Central High School
to carry guns is a festering symptom of deep trouble in the schools and the society in
which the schools—and all of us—exist…when the Board of Education believes
firearms are a necessary adjunct to routine discipline, then something is terribly
wrong.27
Students were troubled by the increased security, and security guards carrying revolvers
particularly disturbed them: “I don’t think they need guns. All they are going to do is start
more trouble.”28 One week later, guns were removed from Central guards, a result of
widespread protest from district parents and students.29
In response to the pattern of intense media scrutiny directed toward Central High
School, Janell Walden wrote an insightful editorial in the Central Luminary:
Prejudiced people who are seeking to justify their beliefs and those who are ignorant
to the happenings and students in a black high school—Central High School—would
believe that most, if not all, of the students are hall-birds and frustrated English
students. Such people would believe that Central high school is a hopeless
blackboard jungle where learning and productivity run a poor second to
discipline….Were it such, I would not charge the illustrious Kansas City Star with
manifesting itself as definitely bigoted toward Central high school—a black
school….It is my estimation that the Star’s article has dealt Central a severe blow,
but I am hoping that my out-cry, and all others like it, can help encourage publication
“Outbreaks at Schools Here,” Kansas City Star, 13 February 1970; “Resorting to Guards with Guns in
the Public Schools,” Kansas City Star, 14 February 1970, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public,
Central High.
27
“Armed Guards Concern Students,” Kansas City Star, 17 February 1970, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
28
“Goal of Relevance for Central High School,” Kansas City Times, 22 February 1970, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
29
148
of more truthful and consequently inclusive views of the interior of the building at
3221 Indiana Avenue.30
Students such as Walden were fed up with the portrayal of Central as the city’s roughest
school, and the racial overtones were becoming more and more obvious.
Marion Halim and Arthur Jackson, both students at Central in the early 1970s, like
Walden, did not remember Central to be a bad place at all, though they were cognizant of
Central’s slipping reputation in and around Kansas City. Halim, in reference to Central’s
characterization as a violent school, explained her remembrances:
Well you know what, we had that reputation, but I can’t say that I remember that
being a reality. I mean, of course there were fights. There were fights at every
school, you know….In the neighborhood, there was, you know, violence around
there, but I just can’t remember that there was a threatening or harmful environment
inside of the school.31
Jackson affirmed Halim’s recollection. When asked about the perception of Central as
violent or dangerous, Jackson quickly responded: “Not true. Not true. Violent? No. Central
was not violent.”32 Yet the barrage of public negativity and portrayal of Central as the most
dangerous and violent school in Kansas City was taking its toll.
Morale at Central High School by 1971 was low. After just a year at the helm,
Central’s principal, David W. Porter, the first black principal from outside of the city, was
removed from the principalship and subsequently reassigned in a temporary administrative
capacity in November of 1971. Porter, who had previously served as a principal in Dallas,
Texas, was seemingly pressured out of his leadership position at Central as a result of
demands from a group of parents who alleged that Porter was “weak” and allowed students
30
Central Luminary, 6 March 1970, 1.
31
Marion Halim, conversation with author, 2 October 2012.
32
Arthur Jackson, conversation with author, 2 October 2012.
149
to roam the halls and gamble on school grounds.33 Porter’s reassignment followed quite a lot
of controversy, as many students and parents were displeased with the district’s decision and
felt the grounds for his dismissal were questionable. Daniel Britton, a white assistant
principal who stepped into the head spot following Porter’s departure, succeeded Porter.34 In
a parting shot to district administration, Porter, when asked about his removal said, “I
couldn’t care less”; he immediately followed the comment with a very different tone and
one perhaps that speaks to the district decision to hire a white replacement. He stated: “I’m
black, and I’ve spent half of a century working with black people. Those kids have been real
nice to me.”35
In addition to Porter’s removal, Centralites had been contending with negative
publicity for years. The district administration and members of the school board,
consequently, devised a plan, a rather curious one at that—they purchased two chicken
fryers for Central High School. “Will fried chicken in the cafeteria prevent student uprisings
at Central High School?” questioned Patricia Doyle, a Kansas City Star journalist. Doyle
followed up the question with the following explanation:
Kansas City school board members and administrators hope it will, and consequently
have approved the purchase of two chicken fryers for $1,439 for the school. In
discussing the pros and cons of the purchase by the financially strapped school
district the following came to light:…Central High School is the only Kansas City
high school without fried chicken.36
“Week of Uncertainty at Central,” Kansas City Star, 21 November 1972, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
33
34
“Central Principal Receives New Job,” Kansas City Star, 17 February 1972, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
“Week of Uncertainty at Central,” Kansas City Star, 21 November 1972, Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Central High.
35
“Chicken as Moral Builder,” Kansas City Star, 12 January 1971, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Public, Central High.
36
150
Superintendent for Urban Education for the Kansas City, Missouri School District, Robert
Wheeler, noted in 1972 that the chicken fryers would “help build morale,” stating that there
was a “dire need for impressive steps to head off difficulties at Central.”37 In addition to
Central, a chicken fryer was also purchased for all-black Lincoln High School, and the
measure was only opposed by a single vote, a board member representing two of the whitest
high schools in the district, Northeast High School and East High School.38 The Council of
100 on Human Relations picketed the Kansas City Star following the chicken fryer article,
which Paul Smith, chairman of the Council, said was done to convey that the Central
community had “registered their resentment of the implication made by the Star that
purchase of chicken fryers at Central will pacify students…”39 Indeed, Central supporters
were growing increasingly resentful and indignant of the lack of regard for Central. Such
frustration revealed itself in the most unlikely of places—a basketball game held in 1972 in
Maryville, Missouri.
Maryville was the location of the March 1972 district quarterfinal basketball game
between suburban and all-white Raytown South High School and Central High School. The
fact that the game was being played in Maryville and not Kansas City was in large part due
to Central’s reputation and the fear among white schools that playing in the inner-city would
result in conflict. Thus, state officials decided that Maryville, a city with a deeply racist
history, was a better location for the basketball game than Kansas City, a decision that Dr.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
“Article Protested,” Kansas City Star, 31 January 1971, Missouri Valley Special Collections, SchoolsPublic, Central High.
39
151
Edward Fields, head of the Division of Urban Education in the Kansas City, Missouri
School District, said in hindsight was “foolhardy.”40 The decision proved disastrous, as a
riot broke out between Central spectators and Raytown South spectators following the
overtime thriller. Jackson, a team manager for Central’s basketball team, recalled the game
and the chaos that unfolded in its aftermath:
The game was close; matter fact Raytown was leading by one. There might have
been about 15 or 20 seconds left in the game. Raytown had the ball. Raytown came
down, guy drives to the bucket for a shot. He shoots the shot up, Lyonell
Harden…goes up, blocks his shot, wipes the shot off. Central gets the rebound, the
ball’s passed out...We were getting ready to run our fast break and this referee that
was past half court, blonde haired referee, blows his whistle. [He] comes running
down the court and calls goaltending. They already had an official already down
there that didn’t even call the play and he’s right there. Raytown goes to the line and
hits two free throws, and now they lead by one. Jack Bush calls a timeout. The
scorekeeper didn’t stop the clock….we called a timeout with maybe 8 or 10
seconds….they didn’t stop the clock….[it] ran down to three seconds….Now the
only thing you could really do is do the hail Mary….We throw it in. Tim Abney
catches it—almost makes a spectacular shot…it hits the rim…the clock hit zero and
it was a stampede. The fight was on.41
According to Jackson, the fight lasted every bit of twenty minutes. “You could hear bottles
breaking….I remember seeing the ref that made that call. He had just blood…he was full of
blood. You just see chairs flying, people hollering.”42 In the end, fourteen persons were
injured, none seriously. But indeed the damage was far more emotional than physical.
Jackson explained: “They cheated us. And they [were] always cheating us.”43
Almost immediately following the riot, Central was blamed for the incident and
placed on probation, despite the fact that the players on both teams had little if any
40
“Basketball Fight Studied,” Kansas City Times, 10 March 1972, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Public, Central High.
41
Arthur Jackson, conversation with author, 2 October 2012.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
152
involvement in the melee. In fact, Bud Lathrop, Raytown South’s coach, commented that
many of the Central players came to the aid of Raytown South players. Eyewitnesses
suggested that, if anything, Raytown South fans provoked the Central crowd with racial
epithets and taunts. The most injurious aspect of the riot, however, was the media storm that
followed the incident. Central was assailed in the local media with more than twenty articles
written in the Kansas City Star and Kansas City Times, and nearly all of them assumed
Central’s responsibility and guilt in the conflict. Just two days after the game, the nineteen
members of the Northwest Missouri School Administrators Association recommended that
Central High School be suspended from the Missouri State High School Activities
Association, a blow that would not only affect athletics, but music, speech, drama, and
debate.44 The decision was officially handed down on March 23, 1972, that Central would
be placed on probation for the 1973-1974 school year and banned the team from the 1973
regional basketball tournament, a ban that was eventually lifted in January 1973 with
assistance from the NAACP.45
Despite the fact that Central’s punishment was forgiven, the damage had been done.
The very public and widely circulated Maryville incident served as a culminating event. It
reaffirmed an image of Central that had been created in previous years, one that suggested
that all-black Central High School was a dangerous place; and it was widely believed to be
true, especially among Kansas City’s whites. “Central, the school located on Linwood and
Indiana, is not as bad as the news media proclaims it to be,” wrote Nancy Heydon, a student
“Action Against Central,” Kansas City Star, 10 March 1972, Missouri Valley Special Collections,
Schools-Public, Central High.
44
“Central is Barred,” Kansas City Star, 27, March 1972, Missouri Valley Special Collections, SchoolsPublic, Central High.
45
153
at all-white Southwest High School who spent the day at Central in March of 1973 as part of
a school exchange; she continued:
I have read many times of the prejudice that seemingly existed at Central and,
truthfully, was apprehensive of attending the exchange. But, going to Central was a
rewarding experience, and I found that the school life at Central is much like my
own. But importantly, the people were friendly and congenial….I believe that we
need many more school exchanges for we all need to be opened to the lives of each
other.46
By 1973, white and black students were largely attending separate schools and thus
relegated to being in each other’s company only during “school exchanges.” As such, those
on the outside had largely formed Central’s reputation, but perception had become reality,
and Central High School’s troubled image served as a longstanding obstacle. Whites were
not interested in attending “dangerous” all-black Central High School, nor were they keen
on attending any of the central city schools that had a large proportion of black students.
With nearly sixty percent of its student population black by 1973, the Kansas City, Missouri
School District was resegregated, and there was little evidence to suggest that the trend
would reverse itself.
Federal Oversight and the ESAA, 1973
While Central High School found itself under almost constant scrutiny, a result of
the racial makeup of the student population, Central was not the city’s only black high
school. In fact, by 1973, nearly all of Kansas City, Missouri School District’s high schools
were racially segregated. Blacks and whites lived in different neighborhoods and therefore
attended different neighborhood schools, as can be seen in the 1973 high school enrollment
data. In that year, Central High School was one hundred percent black, as was Lincoln High
School; Manual High School was 99.7 percent black; Paseo High School was 99.8 percent
46
Central Luminary, 8 February 1973, 3.
154
black; and Southeast High School was 97.9 percent black.47 Conversely, Van Horn High
School was 99.9 percent white, Northeast High School was 96.9 percent white; Southwest
High School was 93.4 percent white; and East High School was seventy-seven percent
white.48 Only at Westport High School and West High School was the student enrollment
somewhat balanced. Westport was 54.3 percent white and West High School, 66.3 percent
white.49 So nearly twenty years after the Kansas City, Missouri School District had initiated
its desegregation plan, its schools were firmly divided by race. This did not go unnoticed by
federal investigators, who had been concerned with Kansas City’s segregated schools since
their first site visit in 1967.
The Kansas City, Missouri School District received its first note of noncompliance
from the Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in 1971, but HEW granted
the district a one-year grace period to address deficiencies. The primary areas of concern
were not new, and were the same issues that had long caught the ire of Kansas City’s civil
rights groups; they included a lack of staff integration, problematic and inequitable
administrative assignments, a student transfer policy that too liberally granted white
transfers, and an academically talented program that favored whites.50 The year 1971 was
also the year that the Kansas City, Missouri Human Relations Commission released its
report, “Quality of Urban Life,” urging integration of Kansas City, Missouri, students and
faculty:
47
Arthur A. Benson Papers, unpublished demographic data.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
Henry Givens, “A Report to the State Board of Education Concerning the Desegregation of the Kansas
City Public School District” (August 1975), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box
514.
50
155
No progress has been made in integration of the student bodies; on the contrary, the
pattern is very distinctly one of re-segregation. Progress on integration of faculties is
not uniform throughout the school district. Emphasis should be placed on developing
techniques for accomplishing integration—both to assure quality education for all
students and to avoid federal intervention.51
The report criticized the neighborhood school concept, but offered a conciliatory tone in
stating that “Laying sole blame on the real estate industry for this condition constitutes an
easy excuse.”52 The Kansas City, Missouri School Board, the report explicitly determined,
“has permitted the student body and faculty of many of its schools to remain predominantly
white or to become predominantly black.”53 As such, the report outlined certain
recommendations, which included the following: a continuation of efforts to integrate
faculties and student bodies of all schools to the “fullest extent”; availability of inner-city
school buildings and teachers for educational and recreational use during the summer
months; an expansion of school boundaries to include all of Jackson County; and serious
consideration of implementation of both the 1967 Havighurst Plan and 1968 cluster plan,
both of which were controversially never utilized.54
Kansas City, Missouri, was not the only Midwestern city confronting issues of
educational inequality and segregation; many of America’s northern and western states
faced similar situations, especially Border States. The percentage of black students in the
north and west attending eighty-to-one hundred percent “minority” schools in 1970 was 57.4
percent, over thirteen percent higher than in the South; and in Border States, the percentage
51
“Three Year Report: The Quality of Urban Life.”
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
156
was over sixty, nearly twenty percent higher than in the South.55 Comparatively, the
percentage of black students in white schools in the South rose from 18.4 percent in 1968 to
38.1 percent in 1970.56 Democratic Senator Abraham Ribicoff (who had been Secretary of
HEW from 1949 to 1953) explained the discrepancy between desegregation in the North and
South in a 1972 congressional address:
For years we have fought the battle of integration primarily in the South where the
problem was severe. It was a long, arduous fight that deserved to be fought and
needed to be won. Unfortunately, as the problem of racial isolation has moved north
of the Mason-Dixon Line, many northerners have bid an evasive farewell to the 100year struggle for racial equality. Our motto seems to have been “Do to southerners
what you do not want to do to yourself.” Good reasons have always been offered, of
course, for not moving vigorously ahead in the North as well as the South.57
HEW’s focus, therefore, had shifted by the early 1970s from the South to the North, and in
1972, HEW subsequently listed Kansas City as one of twelve major Northern cities of
concern.58
Congress enacted the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) in June of 1972 to give
school districts like the Kansas City, Missouri School District the opportunity to compete for
federal financial assistance in order to “reduce minority group isolation and to upgrade the
quality of education for all students.”59 The ESAA was effectively designed to accomplish
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare News Release (January 1971), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 315.
55
56
Ibid.
118 Cong. Rec. S 2524-S 2543, 24 February 1972, in David Henderson, Integration in Missouri Public
Schools: Faculty and Students Twenty Years after Brown (Jefferson City, MO: Commission on Human Rights,
1974).
57
58
United States Commission on Human Rights, Statement of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Concerning the Statement by the President on Elementary and Secondary School Desegregation (Washington,
DC: Center for Human Relations, National Education Association, 1970).
Michael Brogan, “Ineligibility under the Emergency School Aid Act: A Disparate Impact Standard,”
Nebraska Law Review 59, no. 4 (1980), 1127-1142.
59
157
three purposes. It was to meet the special needs arising from school desegregation in
elementary and secondary schools; to encourage the voluntary reduction of group isolation
in schools with substantial proportions of “minority group students”; and to aid school
children in overcoming the educational disadvantages of their group isolation.60 The Office
of Education defined racial isolation as a condition in which the enrollment at a school was
greater than fifty percent minority.61 In Kansas City, district officials began preparing an
application for ESAA grant money in January of 1973. On January 22, 1973, in fact, the
Commission on Human Relations commended the Kansas City School Board for taking
steps to qualify for the ESAA and urged it to develop and submit an application to the
United States Office of Education for funds pursuant to isolation.62 Despite the public note
of encouragement from the Commission on Human Relations and the formation of a
Citizens’ Advisory Committee consisting of eighty-four members comprised of an equal
number of whites, blacks, and Hispanics to assist in the ESAA grant application, the district
adopted only narrow measures of relieving racial isolation.63 Busing, in particular, proved to
be a hot-button issue eliciting deep emotions, especially among those in opposition to it.
Clustering or pairing of schools was a tactic that HEW and the federal government
supported as a way of integrating segregated neighborhood schools, but it often involved
large-scale busing, and “forced busing” had long been widely opposed by the Kansas City,
Missouri School District’s white parents. Many white parents did not want their children
60
Emergency School Aid Act: Final Report to Task Force, National Advisory Council on Equality of
Educational Opportunity (June 1977), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
61
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of the Public Schools.
Resolution Regarding the Current State of Education in Kansas City, Missouri, Commission on Human
Relations (March 1973), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 322.
62
63
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of the Public Schools.
158
bussed to schools with black children, nor did they want black children bussed to their white
schools. The Van Horn attendance area, which was 99.9 percent white in 1973, was
particularly vocal about preserving their all-white schools. Robert Lund of the Van Horn
High School’s Patrons Association provided insight into the parents’ opposition to busing
when he stated the following at a public meeting:
I suppose we white people might consider it flattery that some black people think
that just mixing children will give black children a better education. This is
ridiculous. It is inconceivable that a child with home motivation and desire is not
getting a good education in the inner city.64
At the same meeting, an unidentified man in the audience stood up and professed, “We don’t
want colored out here and they don’t want to come.”65 Ultimately the Van Horn High
School Patrons Association voted unanimously to oppose all desegregation options that were
proposed by the school district. The community hostility toward a plan that included busing
options led Bob MacNeven, assistant superintendent, to conclude that the board would not
accept a far-reaching desegregation plan. MacNeven went so far as to ask the Chief
Education Branch Officer for OCR to advise him on the minimum amount of student
desegregation the district could undertake that would render them eligible for ESAA funds.66
Consequently, HEW, not satisfied with the district’s grant proposal, initiated a lengthy probe
of the Kansas City, Missouri School District in 1973. Thus, 1973 marked the beginning of a
contentious and difficult period for Kansas City, Missouri School District officials.
64
“Parents Oppose Integration Options,” Kansas City Times, 27 March 1973, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
“Van Horn School Group Oppose Bussing Options,” Kansas City Times, 28 March 1973, State Historical
Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
65
Memo from Chief Education Branch Office for Civil Rights to Kansas City School District (2 April
1973), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
66
159
District Judge John A. Pratt’s decision in the 1972 case, Adams v. Richardson,
established that HEW had failed to enforce compliance with Title VI in numerous states and
schools where noncompliance had been determined in 1969 and 1970.67 The NAACP had
taken on the case and the Secretary of HEW, Elliot Richardson, was the listed defendant.
Judge Pratt, in finding that HEW had neglected its responsibilities to enforce desegregation
under Title VI, also ruled that HEW had failed to enforce the Swann v. CharlotteMecklenburg Board of Education ruling that described as its objective the elimination from
public schools “all vestiges of state-imposed segregation.”68 If school districts maintained
segregated schools—schools that departed by more than twenty percent from the racial
composition of the district as a whole—they were required to provide adequate
documentation and justification for doing so.69
The Swann case, then, established that it was HEW’s responsibility to evaluate
districts that were out of compliance and withhold funding, and it was the Adams case that
determined HEW was failing to effectively do its job.70 The Kansas City, Missouri School
District was one of the districts that was out of compliance with the parameters established
in Swann. During the 1971-1972 academic year, twenty of Kansas City’s twenty-nine
elementary schools that were over eighty percent black were in reality over ninety-eight
percent black; twenty-three of forty-one elementary schools that were less than twenty
percent black were actually less than two percent black. The same was true of high schools,
67
Adams v. Richardson, 356 F. Supp. 92 (1973).
68
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971).
69
Ibid.
John Egerton, “Adams v. Richardson: Can Separate Be Equal?” Change 6, no. 10 (Winter 1974/1975),
29-36.
70
160
as well: three of four high schools over eighty percent black were over ninety-eight percent
black, and all three high schools less than twenty percent black were less than two percent
black.71 Such bleak statistics regarding desegregation in Kansas City resulted in a lawsuit
filed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Federal District Court in
1973 alleging unlawful racial segregation.72 The case was eventually dropped in 1974, in
large part as a result of SCLC’s inability to fund a legal defense team. But the Kansas City,
Missouri School District’s legal troubles were far from over, as HEW was empowered by
the Adams ruling to pursue districts out of compliance with a newfound vigor.
HEW began its court-ordered enforcement proceedings against eighty-five school
districts around the country with schools “substantially disproportionate” in racial
composition in 1973, and Kansas City, Missouri, found itself among the listed districts and
was notified of the situation on April 17, 1973:
On February 16, 1973, the United States District Court, in the case of Adams v.
Richardson, entered an order which requires the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare, within 60 days from the date of the order, to communicate with a
number of local school districts, including yours, “putting them on notice to rebut or
explain the substantial racial disproportion in one or more of the district’s schools”73
Upon receiving Holmes’s letter, acting superintendent Glenn Travis responded in a letter of
his own dated April 30, 1973, in which he sent the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) statistical
data that documented the racial makeup of the Kansas City, Missouri School District and
basically defended the district’s neighborhood school approach and suggested that
residential segregation was to blame for the racial makeup of the Kansas City, Missouri
71
“Three Year Report: The Quality of Urban Life.”
72
Ibid.
Peter Holmes, Director of the Office of Civil Rights, to Superintendent Adams, 17 April 1973, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
73
161
School District and not the district.74 Beginning with Superintendent James Hazlett, who
served from 1955 to 1969, district officials had been bemoaning the effects of residential
segregation on efforts of desegregation, claiming that, in effect, the district was powerless to
effect meaningful change in segregated schooling as a result of segregation in housing and
residential neighborhoods. A 1973 article in the Kansas City Star addressed the dilemma,
defending the Kansas City, Missouri School District:
There can be no question that the Kansas City Schools indeed are disproportionate in
racial balance. As examples, consider Central and Lincoln High Schools are all black
and that Paseo has one white student…An urban district such as Kansas City is
helpless with its fixed boundaries and pattern of de facto real estate segregation that
has existed for many years….It is not fair, and it is wrong but the fact remains that
strenuous efforts to desegregate schools within a district quite often will only speed
the white migration to the suburbs and other districts.75
The district had long advanced the notion that any attempt to integrate its schools would
result in greater white flight, but HEW was not satisfied with such a rationale and decided to
search deeper. Their investigation was lengthy and thorough.
Flat Broke and Federal Scrutiny, 1973-1976
By 1973, the Kansas City, Missouri School District voters had not passed a bond
issue or tax levy in four years. In fact, between 1969 and 1987, district voters rejected
nineteen consecutive bond issue and tax levy initiatives, a distinct reversal from previous
decades in which the Kansas City, Missouri School District enjoyed widespread support. Of
the seventeen bond issues offered to voters between the district’s inception in 1867 and
Glenn Travis, Acting Superintendent to Peter Holmes, Director of the Office of Civil Rights, 30 April
1973, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
74
“City Schools: A Racial Dilemma,” Kansas City Star, 28 February 1973, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
75
162
1956, only one had failed.76 But the district had changed considerably between 1956 and
1973. In 1956, the district consisted of 63,834 students, and seventy-eight percent were
white; 62,685 students attended Kansas City, Missouri School District schools in 1973, and
55.7 percent of them were black. Between 1973 and 1975, the total number of students fell
to 53,725, and the percentage of black students rose to 60.4 percent.77 The last year that the
district secured a tax levy, 1969, was also the last year the district was majority white,
pointing to the racial hostility at play in Kansas City, Missouri.78 Many middle-class whites
had, by 1969, left for the suburbs, but those who remained were starting to send their white
children to parochial schools; they seemingly saw little reason or value in supporting a
majority black school district, a district that their children were no longer attending. The
district’s inability to find money through conventional means meant a growing reliance on
federal grants. As early as 1966, the district had applied for and received over two million
dollars in Title I funding.79 But as financial constraints grew tighter throughout the 1970s
and federal grants more difficult to secure, especially for school districts like Kansas City,
Missouri, that were out of compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
financial hardship fell heavily on the district’s teachers.
The teacher strike of 1974, an indication of the growing frustration of Kansas City,
Missouri School District teachers, displaced students for six weeks. Arthur Jackson, a senior
at Central High School in 1974, recounted how he and some of his classmates attempted to
picket to end the strike: “We were trying to picket for the first two to three weeks until they
76
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of the Public Schools.
77
Arthur A. Benson Papers, unpublished demographic data.
78
Ibid.
79
“Schools Here May Hire 100,” Kansas City Times, 28 April 1966, Schools-Public.
163
stopped us. Then once they stopped us…we would still meet.”80 Jackson also described the
effect that the strike had on students:
We graduated on time but what they were going to do was everybody else had to go
through July 3. We still graduated on graduation day, which was May 29, 1974.
They were going to try and make us go all the way through July, which we were kind
of like “okay”…but what they did, they lowered the credits. Because they knew you
couldn’t make up that time to get the credits to graduate if you need two to three
credits because you missed for a month….So they lowered the credits.81
The strike was obviously a disruption for students like Jackson, who essentially missed six
weeks of his senior year. Certainly, the strike was more incentive to act for parents teetering
on the edge of pulling their students from the district. Between the 1974-1975 school year
and the 1975-1976 school year, the district lost just shy of six thousand students, and the
percentage of black students increased by roughly three percent.82 In only one other twoyear time frame, between 1976 and 1978, did the district lose close to as many students as it
did between 1974 and 1976.83 Many of the district’s white parents viewed the teacher strike
as the final straw, but the teacher strike was an indication of deeper issues.
In light of the district’s financial situation, federal grant acquisition through the
Office for Civil Rights and ESAA funding became critical. The Kansas City, Missouri
School District, as of 1968, received ten percent of its budget from the federal government.
The increase in federal funding was accompanied by greater federal oversight, which proved
problematic for the Kansas City, Missouri School District. The regional representative to the
director of OCR, in a memo to a colleague, noted five “problems” with Kansas City,
80
Arthur Jackson, conversation with author, 2 October 2012.
81
Ibid.
82
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984.
83
Ibid.
164
Missouri School District’s application for eligibility under ESAA. The five areas included
the following: faculty assignment supporting racially identifiable schools; basic
organizational structure of the district, which included an urban education division that
oversaw most of the district’s black, inner-city schools; racial composition of classes for
“mentally retarded” that consisted of seventy-eight percent minority students; lack of a
bilingual education program; and ability grouping and tracking methods that produced racial
segregation of students in “desegregated schools.”84 Indeed, the district did employ a
reassignment initiative in 1973, a reshuffling of teachers so as to “eliminate racial and ethnic
identifiability of any one school.”85 The faculty desegregation plan, in fact, was initially
applauded by OCR, but by 1974 their tune had changed. They criticized the depth of the
plan while also calling into question the district’s Academically Talented Program: “Our
review of the tenth component, the Academically Talented Program raises serious questions
as to the nondiscriminatory nature of the assignment procedures used to place students in the
program.”86 But the issue that seemingly was the final straw was that of “inter-attendance
zone transfer of students” that allowed for students to transfer from schools where their race
was below fifty percent to a school where their race was above fifty percent.87 OCR was
“specifically concerned” with such a practice, and as it so happened, they were troubled
enough with it that they notified the Kansas City, Missouri School District on April 3, 1974
John Scheldrup, Regional Representative to the Director, OCR memo to W.P. Hefley, Regional
Commissioner, Office of Education, regarding “Eligibility of the School District of Kansas City, Missouri,
ESAA Application,” 29 May 1973, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
84
85
Robert Macnevan to Robert Medcalf, Superintendent of Schools, 9 July 1973, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
Taylor August, Director for Civil Rights Region VII to Superintendent Medcalf, 22 March 1974, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
86
Phillip Hersley, Regional Commissioner, Office of Education to Superintendent Medcalf, 3 April 1974,
State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
87
165
that the processing of their ESAA application for 1974 funds had been temporarily
suspended.88
When learning of the temporary suspension of their ESAA funds, the Kansas City,
Missouri School District scrambled to appease OCR, but they continued to advance the
argument that they had long relied upon: a change in the transfer policy would result in
white resentment and thus greater flight.89 By January of 1975, the district had decided to
take a stand against OCR and their claims of noncompliance. Superintendent Medcalf
publicly declared that he believed the district had complied with federal demands to carry
out civil rights assurances in the areas of integration of administrators, discrimination in the
Academically Talented Program, and student transfers.90 HEW, however, did not relent, and
in February of 1975 suspended payments to the Kansas City, Missouri School District, a
suspension that was lifted in March and then reinstated again in April.91 HEW’s approach to
the Kansas City situation was growing bolder. In May, HEW asked a federal judge to force
the Kansas City, Missouri School District to repay all of their ESAA funds already spent for
the 1974-1975 school year. The prospect of having to repay federal funds was a frightening
one, especially for a financially-strapped district such as Kansas City, Missouri.92
Meanwhile, the district hurried to come up with a plan to satisfy OCR, though the
superintendent and school board remained fearful of losing white students. Thus, the school
88
Ibid.
Edward Fields internal memo to Robert Medcalf, 20 August 1974, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
89
90
“Medcalf Denies Noncompliance,” Kansas City Star, 26 January 1975, 3A.
“U.S. Again Halts School Grant,” Kansas City Times, 18 April 1975, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
91
“Suit Asks Schools to Repay U.S. Aid, Kansas City Times, 29 May 1975, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
92
166
board conceived a plan that would integrate some of its schools through the busing of 2,600
black students.93 The plan was almost immediately criticized by parents of black students,
who began an organized effort in opposition to a busing scheme that bussed black students
but not white students. Part of the concern lay in the fact that black parents worried about
sending their children to Independence, an area of town that had exhibited racist tendencies
toward black students. One parent suggested that Independence was “George Wallace
country.”94 The Kansas City Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) was particularly vocal about their displeasure with the district’s plan. “The board’s
desegregation plan is unfair and inequitable...black parents are just not going to send their
kids to Independence.”95 Emmanuel Cleaver, SCLC Executive Director, was especially
determined in his disapproval of busing black children out of the central city and into
nineteen district schools in the northeast part of the district’s attendance area: “Only at
gunpoint would I put my twins on a bus out to Independence.”96 The SCLC admonished the
district for its desegregation efforts and explicitly told the board of education that they could
not accept the desegregation plan as proposed and instead offered a plan of their own that
called for a merger of the Kansas City, Missouri School District and Center School District,
as well as clusters of elementary schools and a consolidated high school.97 Consistent with
“Education Board Orders Staff to Implement Integration Plan,” Kansas City Times, 17 July 1975, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
93
“Leaders Seek Acceptance of Bussing Plan,” Kansas City Times, 14 July 1975, State Historical Society
of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
94
95
“SCLC Drafting School Plan,” Kansas City Times, 13 June 1975, State Historical Society of Missouri,
Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
96
Ibid.
“Board Members Say HEW Can’t Stop Plan,” Kansas City Times, 11 July 1975, State Historical Society
of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
97
167
its pattern of neglecting the demands of its black constituents, the district did not give
credence to the SCLC’s demands, suggesting that their desegregation plan that would bus
black students to white schools was “the only way to achieve some measure of
desegregation while preventing a massive flight of white parents to the suburbs and private
schools.”98 Thus, the district submitted its controversial plan, which became known as Plan
E, to OCR and awaited a decision on funding.
It took OCR only four weeks to conclude that Plan E was unacceptable on the
grounds that it preserved segregation at a level of ninety percent or greater in as many as
twenty district schools and additionally placed the burden of busing almost solely on black
students.99 The district responded by scrapping Plan E only a little over a week after
receiving OCR’s decision; instead of working to revise the plan as suggested by OCR, the
district simply abandoned it.100 Thus, the Kansas City, Missouri School District opened the
1975-1976 school year without a comprehensive desegregation plan and a continued
reliance on the neighborhood system.101 After a summer of planning to establish twelve
alternative elementary schools and make boundary line adjustments across the district, the
board voted down the proposal in a six-to-three vote and informed OCR of the development:
98
Ibid.
99
Taylor August, Director of OCR, to Superintendent Medcalf, 14 July 1975, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 317.
“Board Scraps Plan E, Going to Courts,” Kansas City Times, 24 July 1975, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
100
“HEW Blocks School Grant,” Kansas City Times, 19 September 1975, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 402.
101
168
“In deference to your position, we have withdrawn Plan E and begun work on another
plan.”102
In the wake of the Plan E fiasco, the district formed a community task force, and two
separate plans were developed: Plan A and Plan 6. Plan A was a bold plan described as
“total desegregation,” a plan so thorough that students of color would comprise two-thirds of
every school within the Kansas City, Missouri School District through busing, clustering,
pairing, and student exchanges.103 Plan 6 consisted of three options, the most popular of
which was Plan 6C, which planned for an enrollment of fifty percent black and white in
most schools, though it established thirty percent “minority” enrollment as a minimum.
Additionally, the plan provided for a shifting of attendance zones, and, like Plan E before it,
the busing of over two thousand black students to white schools on the urban fringe.104 In a
rather predictable fashion, the board voted in favor of Plan 6C, despite the opposition of
many in the black community, including the NAACP.
Plan 6C, 1976-1977
Following the board’s approval of Plan 6C in December of 1976, serious concerns
surfaced. Chairman of the community task force, Isaac Gardner, Jr. suggested that the
proposal would disrupt the black community and impose one-way busing, stating that it was
“abundantly clear that while this plan conveniently stabilizes several white communities, it
totally disrupts the black community.”105 Likewise, Dr. Cameron, President of the NAACP,
102
“School Board Vote Upholds ‘No-Change’ Policy,” Kansas City Times, 6 August 1975, 3A.
“Desegregation Now Up to Board,” Kansas City Star, 3 October 1976, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
103
104
Ibid.
105
“School Plan Termed Racist,” Kansas City Times, 18 March 1977, B36.
169
expressed his concerns regarding the fact that Plan 6C left Central, Lincoln, Paseo, and
Southeast High Schools and their feeders all black. He also expressed alarm that black
students would bear the brunt of busing:
There are still things in it that give me a great deal of concern—like how many black
children are going to be bussed….The black community will not tolerate the
wholesale bussing of black children and negligible busing of white children.106
Busing was not just controversial in Kansas City; by 1976, forced busing had garnered
national criticism. In the aftermath of Boston’s violent opposition to busing, Congress, in
1975, approved the Byrd Amendment, which prohibited HEW from using funds to require
transportation of any student to a school other than the one nearest his or her home.107 This
proved a problem in Kansas City due to the fact that Plan 6C relied heavily on a busing
component. How would HEW respond to Kansas City’s plan in light of the new, more
stringent anti-busing restrictions that had been enacted?108 The uncertainty was settled in
July of 1977 when David Tatel, Director of OCR, informed newly appointed superintendent
Robert Wheeler that Plan 6C did not “achieve the level of desegregation required by
prevailing constitutional and statutory standards,” alleging that the plan perpetuated
discriminatory attendance zone lines, transported “minority” students away from their
neighborhood schools, and limited desegregation at the secondary level, reducing the
number of all black secondary schools from nine to eight.109
106
“Mixed Reactions to Plan,” Kansas City Star, 18 March 1977, B36.
107
Kathleen Nutter, “‘Militant Mothers’: Boston, Busing, and the Bicentennial, 1976,” Historic Journal of
Massachusetts (Fall 2010), 52-74.
108
The anti-busing legislation did not apply to magnet schools, nor did it affect federal court rulings.
David Tatel, Director OCR, to Superintendent Wheeler, 7 July 1977, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
109
170
OCR and the Kansas City, Missouri School District eventually settled their
differences with regard to Plan 6C, as the district agreed to the modifications and
subsequently voted them into policy in February of 1978. The district agreed to the
following six-part resolution: Effective September, 1978, white students enrolled at Lincoln
High School would consist of no less than fifteen percent and no more than thirty percent by
the implementation of a magnet school; beginning with the 1978-1979 school year, all site
selections for new educational programs offered at the elementary level would be made to
promote desegregation of the entirely black schools; effective in 1978, the policy of
permitting senior high school students to transfer on the basis of their senior status was to be
discontinued; policies governing faculty assignments was to meet 1973 ESAA guidelines;
the district would implement and maintain procedures that assured the health and childcare
transfer not be used as a device in inhibiting desegregation; and the district would continue
non-discriminatory optional zoning and ensure that all students within the optional zone
remained in the optional zone school assignment unless approved for transfer through the
district’s intradistrict transfer policy.110 But despite the district’s willingness to appease
OCR and secure federal funding through the aforementioned modifications to Plan 6C, their
focus had shifted from efforts of intradistrict desegregation to interdistrict.
The shift to an interdistrict approach was not new. Superintendent Hazlett publicly
recognized the importance of considering metropolitan residential patterns in district policy
with his 1968 release of “Concepts for Changing Times,” in which he stated:
“Master plans” must recognize social, political, and economic realities and the
attitudes of people. New patterns of school reorganization and pupil assignment to
Samuel Carpenter, President of the Board, to David Tatel, Director of OCR, 22 February 1978, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
110
171
make schools integrated must be studied in their relationships to the enlargement of
de facto residential patterns, the out-migration of white residents111
By 1975, the district appeared ready to seriously consider a desegregation plan that was
metropolitan in scope, and the district’s legal team began investigating the possibility of the
school district filing a metropolitan desegregation lawsuit. A metropolitan plan, however,
was not going to be easily achieved. The district, at the time that they began really
entertaining the idea of a metropolitan plan in 1975, was already embroiled in a struggle
with HEW for federal funding, and the Milliken v. Bradley case had set a legal precedent
that made city-suburban desegregation less likely.
In 1970, the NAACP filed a suit against Michigan state officials, including William
Milliken, the state’s governor, alleging a relationship between housing and education. After
a little over a month-long trial, a district court judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and
provided for the creation of a massive metropolitan district in Detroit, Michigan whereby the
Detroit public schools would be involved in a cross-busing plan with fifty-three surrounding
suburban school districts.112 The case eventually made it before the Supreme Court, and in
1974, the federal court’s decision was overturned. The Court ruled that any city-suburban
desegregation plan had to demonstrate that the suburbs or the state took actions that
contributed to segregation in the city.113 The decision represented a blow to cities such as
Kansas City, where the city schools were majority black and suburban schools majority
white. Milliken protected the suburbs, affirming the notion that the suburbs were off-limits
111
“Concepts for Changing Times: Proposals Offered for Public Examination, Dealing with Educational
Equity in the Kansas City, Missouri, School District.”
Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of
Education (New York: The New Press, 1996).
112
113
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974).
172
with regard to efforts of desegregation within the city. So when the Kansas City, Missouri
School District announced its decision to seek city-suburban desegregation, an
announcement coincidentally that was made on March 20, 1977, the same day in which the
school board approved Plan 6C, it was obvious that the road to metropolitan desegregation
would be anything but easy.
173
CHAPTER 7
A NEW DIRECTION: FROM METROPOLITAN PLAN
TO MAGNET REMEDY, 1977-1988
The Suburban Dilemma, 1977-1980
The Kansas City, Missouri School District’s leadership had long desired to include
the suburban school districts in a desegregation remedy, and it began to take shape in 1977.
By 1977, the district’s student population was 63.9 percent black, and the trend was
suggesting that the percentages would only grow in the subsequent years, which it did; in
1983 black students comprised 67.7 percent of the district’s total population.1 Moreover,
while the overall percentage of black students was increasing, the district’s total student
population was decreasing at an alarming rate. With a total population of 45,726 students in
1977, the number dropped to 36,650 in 1983.2 In striking contrast, the total student
population in 1967, when the number of district students was at its highest point, had been
74,997. Thus the ten-year period between 1967 and 1977 is a time when the Kansas City,
Missouri School District’s overall student population fell by nearly thirty thousand students,
and the majority went from white to black.
Many of the departing students and their families were leaving the Kansas City,
Missouri School District for the surrounding metropolitan suburbs. Johnson County, Kansas,
and Clay County, Missouri, experienced quite impressive growth between 1960 and 1980.
1
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984.
2
Ibid.
174
Johnson County, home to Overland Park, Olathe, Shawnee, and Prairie Village, grew from
217,662 residents in 1960 to 270,269 residents in 1980, and the population remained
overwhelmingly white; it was 99.2 percent white in 1960 and 97.2 percent white in 1980.3
Likewise, Clay County, Missouri, underwent a similarly noteworthy population growth.
Consisting of such northern suburban towns as Liberty, Parkville, Gladstone, and North
Kansas City, Clay County grew from 87,474 in 1960 to 136,488 in 1980 and from 99.1
percent white in 1960 to 97.5 percent white in 1980.4 The suburban school districts residing
within each respective suburban town on both sides of state line were also large and mostly
all white. Thus, it was not altogether surprising when the Bi-State Committee suggested, in
1977, a metropolitan desegregation plan as the only way to meaningfully integrate the
Kansas City, Missouri School District.
The Missouri Advisory Committee, also known as the Bi-State Committee on
Education, conducted an independent assessment of over twenty school districts in
metropolitan Kansas City.5 The report, released in January of 1977, was designed to advise
the Commission on Civil Rights regarding the “current status of educational activities and
problems” in the Metropolitan Kansas City area, as well as the significance of segregated
housing patterns and activities of civic and political leadership.6 The committee called for
school districts in Missouri and Kansas to work cooperatively with each other to develop a
program of voluntary student transfers and regional magnet schools:
3
United States Census (1960, 1980), www.socialexplorer.com.
4
Ibid.
“Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City,” Bi-State Committee on Education, Missouri
Advisory Committee (January 1977), Missouri Valley Special Collections, 1.
5
6
Ibid., vi.
175
A well designed voluntary program, with strong community support, could improve
significantly the quality of public education throughout the area. At the same time, it
would have an important impact in reducing the racial and economic isolation that
pervades the school districts in the area.7
The committee provided a disclaimer, as well, and stated, “If suburban districts manifested
no cooperative interest within two months after the report was released, a suit should be
brought seeking a compulsory remedy.”8 Roughly two months after the report was released
in January of 1977, the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s school board decided to seek
a mandatory desegregation plan that would involve the surrounding suburban school
districts.
It was the work of Daniel Levine and Robert Freilich, both University of MissouriKansas City professors, which provided the impetus for the lawsuit.9 Levine and Freilich’s
study concluded that Kansas City had promising prospects for a metropolitan desegregation
plan, based in large part on two prior Supreme Court rulings, Green v. New Kent County
School Board and Keyes v. Denver School District.10 Green established that school districts
had to dismantle segregated systems, but it was the Keyes case that, according to Levine and
Freilich, represented reason for optimism in Kansas City. Keyes was the first ruling on
school segregation in the North and West, in which the school district was considered
responsible for policies that resulted in racial segregation in the school system, which
included constructing schools in segregated neighborhoods and gerrymandering attendance
7
Ibid., 5.
8
Ibid., 6.
9
“Chronology,” Kansas City Times, 1 September 1977, B4.
Green v. New Kent County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968); Keyes v. Denver School District, 413
U.S. 189 (1973).
10
176
zones.11 Moreover, Keyes affirmed that if there was segregation in one part of the district,
the entire district was presumed to be illegally segregated, as well.12 Such line of reasoning
led Freilich to conclude that “if area school districts fostered segregation in the 1950s [,]
there could be a ‘presumption’ that they continued to do so in later years.”13 The challenge
was in finding a way to include the suburban districts in the remedy, considering the Court’s
ruling in Milliken v. Bradley. A lawsuit in Kansas City would have to overcome Milliken
and show that the suburban school district and the state had fostered segregation.
Signifying the first time a school district had filed a desegregation lawsuit, the
Kansas City, Missouri School District Board looked to a desegregation remedial order that
incorporated eighteen suburban school districts in both Kansas and Missouri. The initial
lawsuit was huge. Several plaintiff groups were listed, including the Kansas City, Missouri
School District and the children of school board members Joyce Stark and Edward Skaggs,
and the complaint listed sixty-seven defendants; among them were school districts in both
Missouri and Kansas, as well as the federal agencies of Health, Education, and Welfare
(HEW), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Transportation
(DOT).14 At the core of the complaint was the reasoning that governmental action, even if it
did not have a segregative intent but did have a segregative effect, resulted in a
Constitutional violation.15 As such, the actions of the defendants, it was argued, had resulted
in a demographic shift that left the Kansas, City Missouri public schools racially isolated
11
Orfield and Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation.
12
Ibid.
13
Stephen Winn, “Effect on Suit Here Unclear to Lawyers,” Kansas City Star, 3 July 1979, A4.
14
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
15
Dunn, Complex Justice.
177
and obligated the state to stop the transformation. By such reasoning, therefore, the state
contributed to the segregated nature of metropolitan Kansas City. By positioning the
argument in such a way, the district believed that the limitations of Milliken could be
avoided, but obviously it ultimately hinged on the judicial interpretation.
Judge Russell Clark, who took the place of Judge John Oliver upon his recusal, was a
conservative Democrat and a native Missourian. Clark, one of ten children, grew up in
Oregon County, a small rural area of southern Missouri and was a strong proponent of
education. He had an older brother, in fact, who was a teacher, principal, and eventually
superintendent.16 While Clark, appointed by Jimmy Carter to the District Court for the
Western District of Missouri, believed strongly in public education, he also supported local
school district control and the importance of school boards and school districts having
autonomy. This was in stark contrast to Judge Oliver, who was appointed by President
Kennedy and was known as one of the most activist judges in the country.17 One of Judge
Clark’s first rulings was to realign the school district as defendants, which left the attorneyless school children as the plaintiffs.18 As such, Arthur A. Benson, II, a local civil rights
lawyer came on the scene.
Arthur Benson, only thirty-five years old in 1979 when he was approached to
represent the school children of the Kansas City, Missouri School District, obliged to take
on the case, not knowing that it would ultimately consume his professional life for nearly
twenty-five years and define his career. Benson, despite his young age, was a known civil
16
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
17
Dunn, Complex Justice.
18
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
178
rights attorney in Kansas City who began his career with the Legal Aid Society before
embarking on a legal career in private practice. It did not take Benson long to establish a
reputation as a guardian of the poor. He became known for taking on corrupt car dealers and
landlords, as well as anyone who targeted and exploited the impoverished.19 With Benson’s
knowledge of Kansas City, his liberal agenda, and his strong reputation as a civil rights
lawyer, he seemed well-suited for the role of representing the children of the Kansas City,
Missouri School District. Benson recalled meeting with Jim Borthwick of BlackwellSanders, an attorney who represented the school district, in 1979:
I can remember Jim Borthwick sitting right across from me and saying, “Here’s the
deal. The school children have no plaintiff so they need a lawyer. We, BlackwellSanders and the school board, really…would like you….We support you if that’s
your decision.” And they said, “To allay your concerns; the way I see it,” and this is
Borthwick speaking. He said, “You’ll be sitting in the front of the boat with the
plaintiffs, and we’ll be in the center, or we’ll be doing the rowing for the school
board.”20
With such support, Benson took the opportunity to represent the school children, though
soon after he did, the school district, as he explained, was no longer willing to “sit in the
middle and pull the oars.”21 The district had decided that they could not afford to support
Benson and his case, so Benson looked elsewhere, sending letters to elicit support, and the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) agreed to send two lawyers, Jim Liebman and Teddy
Shaw, as well as “a ton of resources.”22 The NAACP, in the aftermath of the Milliken case,
19
Phillip O’Connor and Lynn Horsley, “Guardian or Glory Hound? Arthur A. Benson II Has Been Called
Many Things During KC Schools Case,” Kansas City Star, 14 July 1996, A1.
20
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
179
was eager to find a place to seek a viable interdistrict metropolitan plan: Kansas City, they
decided, was the place to do it.
Benson knew that the fight for a metropolitan desegregation remedy was fraught
with obstacles, most specifically a conservative democrat as a judge and a precedent that had
been established in Milliken that made interdistrict desegregation most challenging. Benson
was consumed with trial preparation materials, conducting nearly three hundred depositions
and hiring twenty-five law students, paid by the LDF, to conduct extensive research about
housing and education.23 Benson’s intuition, however, proved to be correct; a metropolitan
remedy was going to be a struggle. Judge Clark was a hard sell. What Judge Clark was
seeking was hard evidence, specific acts of discrimination against blacks by the suburban
school districts or public officials in the suburbs, and he seemed dissatisfied with the
plaintiff’s ability to deliver direct evidence.24 Thus, Judge Clark’s ruling that there was no
justification for holding the suburbs accountable all but shut the door on a metropolitan
remedial order.
Benson, though, remained hopeful that Clark’s willingness to continue to consider
the state’s role in segregation meant an interdistrict plan was still viable. Benson continued
to hold onto his vision that the eleven area suburban school districts, along with the Kansas
City, Missouri School District, could be consolidated into one large district in which
students would be mandated to participate in a low-cost metropolitan plan. Such a plan
would have mitigated white flight, Benson reasoned, because all of the schools in the greater
metropolitan area would have been involved. Whites would have no option but to
23
Ibid.
24
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
180
participate, unless they were willing to move beyond Kansas City’s suburbs.25 Additionally,
while Benson’s efforts were being poured into proving an interdistrict case against the state,
a back-up plan was in the works. The back-up plan was a remedy that would shift focus
from a mandatory desegregation plan to a voluntary one through the use of magnet schools.
The Growing Popularity of Magnet Schools
and Voluntary Desegregation, 1980-1984
The idea of incorporating magnet schools into the Kansas City, Missouri School
District had been suggested by both the Bi-State Committee and OCR. In their 1977 report,
the Bi-State Committee suggested the following with regard to magnet schools:
A stable, quality educational system is the goal of the Bi-State Committee. To
achieve this it will be necessary to upgrade education in the entire area….This will
require cooperative efforts by all school districts in the area as well as substantial
State and Federal financial assistance. Assistance for a magnet school program is
needed from local colleges and universities and from the business and civic
communities. These magnet schools should be designed in cooperation with the
suburban districts to minimize duplication of services and offer the widest possible
range of educational opportunities for students in the region.26
In 1978, after the district’s submission of Plan 6C, OCR Director David Tatel reasoned that
turning Lincoln High School into a magnet school might accomplish an increase in white
enrollment of the desired fifteen to thirty percent.27 Indeed, the district did work to convert
Lincoln High School into a magnet school, effective September of 1978, and renamed it the
Lincoln Academy for Accelerated Study.28 The conversion of Lincoln from traditional to
25
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
26
“Crisis and Opportunity: Education in Greater Kansas City,” 5.
David Tatel, Director, Office of Civil Rights to Samuel Carpenter, President of the Board, 22 February
1978, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
27
Note: The name was changed back to Lincoln High School in May of 1978 as a result of protests among
Lincoln High School alumni.
28
181
magnet school came with $4.2 million in federal funding, and Thomas Eagleton, Democratic
senator from Missouri, proclaimed the district would need “every penny” to convert Lincoln
into a magnet school.29 Lincoln, Eagleton explained, had crumbling plaster, peeling paint,
and broken light fixtures, not to mention science labs that had been burned in a fire just
several weeks before Eagleton’s visit. “Why,” Eagleton asked, “would a student from Van
Horn High School decide to go to Lincoln Academy?”30 Eagleton’s question was indeed a
valid one. Kansas City, Missouri School District’s white students had historically shown
little interest in attending school with black students, and given the state of Lincoln’s
facilities, it seemed unlikely that a new magnet theme was going to attract large numbers of
white students. The district did, however, secure funding for updates to Lincoln High School
in May of 1978, though the budget was tight. Yet Lincoln’s transition to a magnet school
left district officials hopeful and resulted in the identification of four elementary schools as
potential sites for all-day magnet kindergarten programs and a business management
philosophy magnet for West High School.31
Magnet schools were created in the late 1970s when urban districts, such as the
Kansas City Public Schools, began seeking alternatives to court-ordered desegregation
mandates.32 Following the United States Court of Appeals ruling in Morgan v. Kerrigan,
magnet schools became a viable option for desegregation, a way to make schools attractive
“‘Lincoln Plan OK’: Eagleton School Tour,” Kansas City Times, 29 March 1978, State Historical Society
of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 462.
29
30
Ibid.
31
“Four All-Day Kindergartens Part of Magnet School Plan,” Kansas City Times, 4 May 1978, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 316.
Ronald Szczypkowski and Marilyn Musumeci, “New York State Evaluation Study,” in Magnet School
Policy Studies and Evaluations, eds. Donald R. Waldrip, Walter L. Marks, and Nolan Estes (Austin: Morgan
Printing and Publishing, 1993), 103-256.
32
182
to parents, students, and educators.33 The concept of a magnet school was to offer
specialized, unique programs in order to attract a diverse student body.34 Magnets became an
extremely popular strategy during the early 1980s, implemented as attempts toward school
improvement and desegregation. Magnet schools’ growing attractiveness can be seen in
their widespread implementation nationwide from 1980 onward. Part of the appeal of the
magnet philosophy in Kansas City was the promising outcomes of magnet implementation
in places like Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego, as well as
Missouri’s own St. Louis. Dallas and Chicago, in particular, Thomas Eagleton noted in a
letter to Hale Champion of HEW, attracted students with their “brand-spanking new
facilities” and “truly challenging and innovative curricula.”35
Los Angeles, by the 1983-1984 school year, had magnet programs at the elementary,
junior high, and senior high level, and evaluations showed students in nearly all of the
magnet programs scoring at or above both district and national levels.36 Results in New
York were equally impressive. A 1985 study of forty-one of the one hundred magnet schools
across eight New York districts provided extensive evidence of magnet school
accomplishment in improving educational quality, suggesting that choice was a powerful
33
Morgan v. Kerrigan, 530 F.2d 431(1976).
Susan E. Eaton and Elizabeth Crutcher, “Magnets, Media, and Mirages: Prince George’s County’s
Miracle Cure,” in Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education, eds. Gary
Orfield and Susan E. Eaton (New York: The New Press, 1996), 265-289.
34
35
Thomas Eagleton, U.S. Senate, to Hale Champion, HEW, 23 May 1978, State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 319.
Mary A Raywid, “The Accomplishments of Schools of Choice,” in Magnet Schools: Recent
Developments and Perspectives, eds. Nolan Estes, Daniel U. Levine, and Donald R. Waldrip (Austin: Morgan
Printing and Publishing, 1990), 31-47.
36
183
incentive in the improvement of the New York schools.37 By 1984, the magnet schools of
Milwaukee had grown to include twenty elementary and middle schools as well as five
senior high schools. Black students were attending suburban schools, and white students
were attending city schools.38 Moreover, the San Diego Public Schools had implemented a
voluntary desegregation plan and utilized magnet schools, which proved popular and
successful.39 In Kansas City’s own backyard, in St. Louis, Missouri, a magnet plan had been
initiated in 1981 and resulted in an interdistrict desegregation plan that brought whites to the
city’s magnet schools.40 Despite the great optimism that surrounded magnet schools in the
early 1980s, they were not panaceas; magnet schools were not trouble-free.
Magnet schools, Smrekar and Goldring explained, were intended to entice parents to
remove their children from their home schools and place them in specialty schools possibly
outside of their neighborhood school.41 While magnet schools provided an alternative to
forced busing and mandatory desegregation, there was a certain danger in the magnet theme
that stemmed from their selectivity and elitism. Thus, there was a risk of the establishment
of a two-tiered system within urban school districts whereby low achieving students would
attend poorly functioning traditional schools and academically-oriented magnet schools
Marilyn Musumeci and Ronald Szczypkowski, New York Magnet School Evaluation Study: Final Report
(New York: Magi Educational Services, 1991).
37
Daniel U. Levine and Eugene E. Eubanks, “Desegregation and Regional Magnetization,” in Magnet
Schools: Recent Developments and Perspectives, eds. Nolan Estes, Daniel U. Levine, and Donald R. Waldrip
(Austin: Morgan Printing and Publishing, 1990), 49-57.
38
39
Ibid.
Ellen B. Goldring and Claire Smrekar, “Magnet Schools and the Pursuit of Racial Balance,” Education
and Urban Society 33, no. 17 (2000), 17-35.
40
Claire Smrekar and Ellen B. Goldring, School Choice in Urban America: Magnet Schools and the
Pursuit of Equity (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).
41
184
would house the highest performing students. Often times this two-tiered system had racial
implications:
Lots of places were doing magnet schools. So what they do is they take an all-black
school and the first thing they do is throw out half of the Blacks. Well, that’s not
good. And then they spend more money on that school to attract Whites in. So it’s
doubly discriminatory. Half the blacks become victims of the remedy and then you
have the perception that a school’s only worth spending more money on if you’re
going to try to get Whites to come.42
In order to avoid a two-tiered system, Daniel Levine and Eugene Eubanks, both of whom
were professors in the Department of Education at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
and had significant involvement in desegregation efforts in Kansas City, suggested three key
guidelines. They recommended school districts do the following: “Magnetize” as many
schools as possible in order to provide maximum opportunity; take steps to improve the
effectiveness of education in schools that are left as traditional; and minimize the use of
academic criteria in magnet admissions.43
Employing a comprehensive magnet concept, as explained by Levine and Eubanks,
would, it was thought, avoid detracting from the quality of instruction in inner-city schools
that resulted from the draining off of the best students and teachers and thereby leaving them
even more devoid of positive academic leadership than they were in the first place.44 Thus,
the vision that was being championed by Levine and Eubanks, in particular, was both
systematic and transformative, one that would transform traditional, low-performing urban
schools and the neighborhoods that surrounded them; and Houston, Cincinnati, and Chicago
42
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
43
Levine and Eubanks, “Desegregation and Regional Magnetization,” 55-56.
Daniel U. Levine and Connie C. Moore, “Considerations in Developing and Implementing Big City
Magnet Programs,” State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 514.
44
185
were looked to as examples of how magnet schools could attract young middle-class
families back into the city. By the early 1980s, big urban school districts, Kansas City,
Missouri School District included, were at a critical juncture. While most white families had
already left the cities for the suburbs by 1980, many middle-class black families remained;
yet this began to change in the 1980s. As housing opportunities opened for blacks in the
fringe suburbs, middle-class, black families began to leave the urban core as well. Thus, the
early 1980s signify a time when inner-city schools, already strapped for cash, were faced
with a declining tax base, old and decrepit buildings, and an increasingly impoverished
population of students. Central High School provides a particularly cogent example of this
phenomenon.
All But Forgotten: Central High School in the Early 1980s
The early 1980s signify a time when Central High School and the neighborhoods
around the school were undergoing further transition. By 1980, Central had already been
labeled one of Kansas City’s worst and most dangerous inner-city, black schools, a
reputation that had taken shape over the course of the 1970s.45 The 1980s only strengthened
such a notion, which was in large part a result of the fact that the area around Central High
School had gotten poorer. While the issues causing a socioeconomic decline in the Central
High School attendance area were many and varied, several stand out: a disinvestment in the
urban core, greater housing opportunities for middle-class black families, and the financial
struggles and declining reputation of the Kansas City, Missouri School District.
45
See Chapter 5 for further discussion
186
The percentage of poor people living in poor neighborhoods nationwide grew from
forty percent to fifty-seven percent between 1980 and 1989.46 With the enactment of fair
housing laws and subsequent Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, the Community
Reinvestment Act of 1977, and changes in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in the 1980s,
housing opportunities did improve for black middle-class families who could afford to move
out of the inner-city.47 Black, middle-class outmigration affected the spatial element of the
urban neighborhood that prior to 1970 was vertically integrated. Thus, the presence of
middle-class, black families in inner-city neighborhoods maintained a viable community in
which middle-class families and their resources were community assets.48 The white middleclass had long before abandoned black urban neighborhoods. As opportunities improved for
the black middle-class, many took advantage of the chance for bigger and newer houses in
the fringe suburbs, and fled the inner-city as well. However, by the early 1980s, such
movement left urban neighborhoods with higher percentages of people living in poverty
than ever before.
Kansas City’s urban neighborhoods certainly followed the aforementioned trend, and
the area around Central High School provides insight into this phenomenon. The historic
census data between 1940 and 1980 shows how significantly the area around Central High
School changed between the identified years. Not only did the area transform from almost
entirely white to nearly all black, it also became less socioeconomically diverse, with the
percentage of poor residents growing in number and the middle-class declining. The Central
46
Douglas S. Massey, Andrew B. Gross, and Kumiko Shibayu, “Migration, Segregation, and Geographic
Concentration of Poverty,” American Sociological Review 59, no. 3 (1994), 425-445.
47
Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
48
187
High School census tract enjoyed a consistently low unemployment rate through 1970: four
percent in 1940; one percent in 1950; four percent again in 1960; and five percent in 1970.49
The unemployment rate provides a picture of the socioeconomic viability of a neighborhood,
and between 1940 and 1970, the unemployment rate in the Central High School attendance
area was relatively low. However, the unemployment rate shot up dramatically between
1970 and 1990. By 1980, the unemployment rate had risen to 11.6 percent and then
dramatically increased to 24.1 percent in 1990, suggesting that the area changed
significantly between 1980 and 1990.50 Certainly, the socioeconomic makeup of the
neighborhood affected Central High School and the other inner-city Kansas City, Missouri
School District schools that were forced to serve a student population, which, by the late
1980s, had become much poorer, and the schools had to meet the needs of their students
with fewer and fewer resources.
Lee Barnes, Jr. and Connie Wright both graduated from Central High School in
1982, and their unique life experiences at Central and perceptions of the school upon their
graduation and departure provide great insight. Barnes, Jr. still a resident of Kansas City,
grew up attending Kansas City, Missouri School District schools, as did his classmate,
Wright, who is also a resident of the metropolitan Kansas City area. Both individuals
graduated from Midwestern, four-year universities: Wright graduated from the University of
Kansas, where she earned her bachelor’s degree before going on to get her master’s degree;
and Barnes, Jr. received his engineering degree from Kansas State University in four years.
49
United States Census (1940-1970), www.socialexplorer.com.
50
Ibid., 1970-1990.
188
Barnes, Jr. and Wright attributed their success in college to their preparation at Central High
School in the early 1980s. Wright explained:
I was really surprised when I got to KU. All these Johnson County kids, they don’t
know anything. I was totally prepared. It was very frustrating when I would get into
the large, survey classes and they’d be like “Oh, inner-city black girl, she can’t
handle it.” Little did they know…my study skills….I was ready. Not to mention all
of the extracurricular activities they would pump in to help you. You had people who
were committed…they prepared us.51
Wright, Central’s valedictorian in 1982, and Barnes, Jr. were among the highest performing
students at Central and thus benefited from the most challenging course of study. As Wright
explained, the top ten percent of students, she estimated, received certain advantages: “You
had the same teachers for the advanced classes. They didn’t track, but it was natural
elimination….Our top ten went into engineering or computer science and went to major D-1
schools and earned a 3.0 or above.” Barnes, Jr. corroborated Wright’s remembrances of her
educational experiences and added, “We had African American teachers who kind of knew
what we needed to do to be successful and compete.”52 Wright, too, mentioned her African
American teachers: “To me, the level of commitment was even more so important still for
us. The teachers were still teaching us like they were teaching in a segregated school and to
prepare us to compete with the white man. Because that was their constant call.”53
Both Wright and Barnes, Jr. spent their childhood in the neighborhoods around
Central High School. Wright grew up in a house at Thirty-Sixth and Olive, and Barnes, Jr.
was just around the corner at Thirty-Sixth and Agnes. Barnes, Jr. explained that his
experience growing up in the same house throughout his elementary, junior high, and senior
51
Connie Wright, conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
52
Lee Barnes, Jr., conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
53
Connie Wright, conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
189
high school years was most beneficial and stabilizing: “That was one of the key elements of
the neighborhood. There was some stability. Most of the people I went to school with, I
went to school with them from second grade—or first grade—to high school.” Moreover, he
stated that his commitment to Central High School started at a young age:
One of the things I remember early on, even before I went to Central, was during
homecoming there would be a homecoming parade down Benton Boulevard. Several
of my friends and I, even as middle schoolers or elementary students, we would go to
the games. I knew of the players. It was a community thing.54
Wright, too, one of ten Central High School graduates in her family, recalled the sense of
belonging and kinship she felt in the neighborhood schools around Central:
Growing up in those neighborhood schools there was a sense of community. The
families were really grounded. My mom was there; my dad was there. They were
married for sixty years. The people on the same blocks went to school together, and
there was that community, that longevity. My closest friends are friends from high
school, because they either went to Ladd, Richardson, or C. A. Franklin….55
Wright, however, explained that she noticed a change in the neighborhood and the school in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, a change that she attributed to the busing of Central students,
her peers, out of Central and into area white schools such as Van Horn High School and East
High School:
I think busing was the downfall of the school system. In ’82 we still had the
community and the infrastructure; we just didn’t have all of the students because of
the bussing...we were the last of it. They say we were the last of it, because we were
the last of it. Nobody wants to go where there are no winners. Now you can’t attract
students.56
Busing did indeed lower the overall number of students attending Central, as black
students were pulled from their neighborhood school and bused out into white schools. “We
54
Lee Barnes, Jr., conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
55
Connie Wright, conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
56
Ibid.
190
still tease people who went to Van Horn and East,” Barnes, Jr. stated, whose wife was
among the students who lived in the Central attendance area but spent the majority of her
high school years at East High School.57 Between the 1975-1976 academic year and the
1983-1984 academic year, Central’s total annual enrollment decreased from 2,025 to 682.58
In 1982, Barnes, Jr.’s and Wright’s senior class had dwindled to 167 students, a far cry from
the classes of five hundred or more that walked Central’s halls less than a decade before.
While busing lowered the number of students in neighborhood black schools such as
Central, so too did a noticeable population flee from urban neighborhoods. Neighborhood
census data show that the census tract around Central High School greatly decreased in both
population and population density between 1970 and 1990, though the size of the tract
remained constant at one-half square mile. In 1970, the total population of the tract was
8,260, and the population density per square mile was 16,918.59 By 1980, the total
population of the same area had dropped to 6,112, and the population density had fallen to
12,523.9; by 1990, the population had decreased to 4,768 and the population density to
9,565.5.60 Barnes, Jr.’s family was among those who left the Central attendance area during
the 1980s. In 1987, they moved to Ninety-Seventh and Harris in the southern portion of
Kansas City, Missouri, still in Kansas City but on the southern edge near the suburbs of
Raytown, Lee’s Summit, and Grandview, Missouri: “My parents left,” Barnes, Jr. explained,
“for a nicer, bigger house…that’s where a good number of people live.”61 An uncertain
57
Lee Barnes, Jr., conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
58
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984.
59
United States Census (1970), www.socialexplorer.com.
60
Ibid., 1980-1990.
61
Lee Barnes, Jr., conversation with author, 12 November 2012.
191
future drove Barnes, Jr.’s parents away from their longtime home near Central High School,
uncertainty that, as Barnes, Jr. described, had much to do with the school system and
neighborhood, which by 1987 when the Barnes family moved out, looked vastly different
than just a decade before.
Money and Magnets in Kansas City, Missouri, 1984-1987
“Grown men would cry,” explained Arthur Benson, in reference to the physical
deterioration of the Kansas City, Missouri School District, which by the mid-1980s was in
bad shape.62 He continued:
I mean, the school district had no financing. The buildings were just so
dilapidated….I mean they were foul and stinky and oppressively hot in the winter
and people would come out almost gagging. And the president of the Kansas City
Southern Railroad was crying when he came out of one of these schools. He said, “I
cannot believe that there are children in our community that I am responsible for that
we are educating in conditions like this. Fire code violations, I mean, just horrible.63
A Board-commissioned study in 1980 found that the rehab requirements and costs to
provide a more adequate environment for effective instruction required more than thirty-six
million dollars just to bring the district buildings into compliance with code and safety
regulations and meet minimal standards of education.64 Most certainly, the district’s
financial situation was dire. By 1984, it had been fifteen years since voters had passed a tax
levy.65 In 1969, when the last tax levy had been passed, the Kansas City, Missouri School
District consisted of 72,674 students; that number dwindled to 36,650 in 1984 when Judge
62
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
63
Ibid.
64
Jenkins v. Missouri, 639 F. Supp. 19 (W.D. Mo. 1985).
Alison Morantz, “Money and Choice in Kansas City: Major Investments with Modest Returns,” in
Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education, eds. Gary Orfield and Susan
E. Eaton (New York: The New Press, 1996), 241-263.
65
192
Clark finally handed down his first ruling in the Jenkins case.66 For district supporters, Judge
Clark’s ruling could not come too soon. Considering the steady, yet alarming decline in
enrollment and exodus of both affluent businesses and middle-class and upper-class
residents from the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s attendance area, in addition to the
district’s difficulty in acquiring consistent federal assistance, it was clear that something
needed to be done. The question revolved around what that “something” would entail. It
ultimately hinged on Judge Clark’s interpretation.
Plaintiff’s counsel, Arthur Benson, remained hopeful that Judge Clark would rule in
their favor and against the state, thereby ordering an interdistrict remedy at the state’s
expense. His optimism stemmed from the September 1984 ruling in which Judge Clark ruled
in favor of the district children, the plaintiffs, and against the school district and the state.
Thus, Clark found that the Kansas City, Missouri School District had suffered continuous
effects of pre-1954 segregation and that the State of Missouri had failed in correcting the
problem:
Since the State under its Constitution has the duty to establish and maintain free
public schools, it has the primary responsibility for insuring that the public education
systems in the State comport with the United States Constitution. The State Board of
Education and the Kansas City, Missouri School District Board of Education have
much more expertise than this Court in the operation and management of public
schools within this State…the State board of Education and the Kansas City,
Missouri School District Board of Education are hereby directed to prepare a plan
which would establish a unitary school system within the Kansas City, Missouri
School District.67
Working alongside the district, Arthur Benson and his team of litigators continued to focus
their efforts on convincing Clark to accept a two-way busing plan that involved sending
66
Kansas City, Missouri School District Enrollment by School, 1954-1955—1983-1984.
67
Jenkins v. Missouri, 593 F. Supp. 1485 (W.D. Mo. 1984), 36.
193
urban students to suburban schools and suburban students to urban schools. The
metropolitan-wide plan that Benson so desired, however, was never realized. While the
metropolitan plan was a laborious undertaking that required years of forethought, it took
Clark no more than a week to dismiss it.68
With the possibility of an interdistrict desegregation policy officially off the table,
Benson and his team of litigators and educational experts rather reluctantly turned to magnet
schools as a remedy:
We recognized there were a lot of problems with magnet schools as a remedy, and
we didn’t want to do it. Because they would not be fully effective the way that they
had traditionally been done. Plus, they were expensive and we thought they were
discriminatory.69
To be sure, many magnet schools had been designed as selective schools and had certain
admission requirements, such as an exam, portfolio, or audition that determined one’s
acceptance. As such, magnet schools seemed to privilege certain students over others,
resulting in inequitable access to resources and opportunities.70 Benson recognized the
discriminatory process by which magnets had historically functioned and pledged to avoid
replicating such a system in Kansas City. The new magnet plan, as imagined by Benson’s
team, was one that required massive educational improvements available to all students. The
vision, therefore, for the voluntary interdistrict remedy included, as Benson explained, a
plan to “magnetize the entire district.”71 Transforming the majority of the district’s schools,
68
Dunn, Complex Justice.
69
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
Mark C. Vopat, “Magnet Schools, Innate Talent, and Social Justice,” Theory and Research in Education
9, no. 1 (2011), 59-72.
70
71
Ibid.
194
if not all, into magnet schools solved the problem of access, but the critical issue that
remained uncertain was how such a plan would be subsidized.
The financing of a remedial plan proved to be a divisive issue from the beginning,
and when a magnet remedy was adopted by Judge Clark in June of 1986, it was clear that
costs were sure to be high. Conservative Missouri Attorney General William Webster and
conservative Governor John Ashcroft were determined to ensure a limited fiscal
responsibility on behalf of the state. Already involved in a costly desegregation settlement in
St. Louis, the State of Missouri was particularly motivated to battle another expensive
desegregation plan in Kansas City. Thus, nearly every recommendation advanced by Dr.
Eugene Eubanks and the Desegregation Monitoring Committee, a committee established by
Clark to oversee the implementation and effectiveness of Kansas City, Missouri School
District’s desegregation efforts, was opposed by the state. Consequently, Jenkins v. Missouri
developed into a collection of appeals, whereby the Desegregation Monitoring Committee
would make a suggestion to the court and the State of Missouri would appeal the measure.72
But by July of 1986, the district had a clear vision, and Clark appeared fully on board,
despite the state’s resistance.
The Long Range Magnet Plan, which was principally devised by two educational
consultants, Daniel Levine and Phale Hale, but also involved the expertise and support of
school district officials and plaintiff’s attorneys, was comprehensive in nature and detailed
the conversion of all of the district high schools and middle schools and approximately half
of the elementary schools to magnet schools.73 Only eighteen elementary schools were not
72
Chronology of Jenkins, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Schools-Public, Kansas City, Vertical File.
Phale D. Hale and Daniel U. Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan” (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City,
Missouri School District, 1986), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box D503.
73
195
part of the magnet plan and instead were involved in the district’s Effective Schools
program, which left the school in its traditional format but emphasized a uniform Effective
Schools framework. These schools, dubbed the “black corridor schools,” were referred to as
such because they consisted of a student body that was all black and resided deep within
neighborhoods that were also all black.74 As such, district administrators did not foresee a
magnet theme attracting white students to these eighteen elementary schools and thus
decided on an Effective Schools program instead.75 The state, however, argued that the
proposed magnet plan, despite leaving eighteen elementary schools in a traditional format,
converted too many of the district’s schools into magnet schools and was hastily drafted.76
The court acknowledged the state’s position but affirmed the plan with convincing language:
The Court finds that the proposed plan would serve the objectives of its overall
desegregation program. First, the carefully chosen magnet themes would provide a
greater educational opportunity to all Kansas City, Missouri School District students.
The plan magnetizes such a large number of schools that every high school and
middle school student will attend a magnet school. At the elementary level, there
would be a sufficient number of magnets to permit every student desiring to attend a
magnet school to do so.77
The design of the magnet plan in Kansas City was unique in its all-inclusive nature, which
was designed to avoid issues of inequity and formation of a two-tier educational system. The
Long Range Plan identified the 1991-1992 academic year as the target date for completion.
Considering the scope of the project, the five- to six-year window seemed reasonable, as the
district faced a considerable amount of building renovation and new construction in order to
74
“Black corridor schools” appears to have been the prevailing term for these eighteen schools, though
such a term was not identified in school documents.
75
Loyce Caruthers, conversation with author, 12 April 2014.
76
Court Order, 12 November 1986.
77
Ibid.
196
implement the far-ranging magnet themes, which included foreign languages, computers,
performing arts, agribusiness, environmental science, engineering and technology, health
professions, and classical Greek.78 Indeed, the plan was costly, with a projected six-year
implementation phase of $143 million and an additional $53 million in capital
improvements.79
The capital improvements were slotted for eleven district schools that required work
to ready them for the new magnet theme. Additionally, some of the $53 million was to
account for four new schools. Despite the state’s insistence that the condition of the district’s
schools were a result of lack of maintenance on the part of the Kansas City, Missouri School
District, the court did not buy it:
The Court finds that even if the State by its constitutional violations and subsequent
failure to affirmatively act to remove the vestiges of the dual school system did not
directly cause the deterioration of the school facilities it certainly contributed to, if
not precipitated, an atmosphere which prevented the Kansas City, Missouri School
District from raising the necessary funds to maintain its schools. Furthermore, the
capital facilities program requested by the Kansas City, Missouri School District is a
proper remedy through which to remove the vestiges of racial segregation, and is
needed to attract non-minority students back to Kansas City, Missouri School
District.80
The district, it appears, was benefiting from a court that had bought into the notion that the
substantial resources requested were reasonable considering that the “constitutional
violations committed were also substantial.”81 Although the State of Missouri did not
approve, their appeals fell on deaf ears; neither the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals nor the
Supreme Court were willing to oppose Clark’s support of The Long Range Magnet Plan. So
78
Hale and Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan.”
79
Ibid.
80
Court Order, 12 November 1986.
81
Ibid.
197
with the district’s magnet plan firmly in place, the district began working toward
implementation of their ambitious magnet-themed remedy.
Having affirmation by the courts that a comprehensive magnet plan was an
acceptable remedial order, the court addressed the condition of the district’s schools.
Richard C. Hunter, a consultant, was commissioned by the district to evaluate the extent of
capital improvement needs, which involved a school-by-school assessment of all of the
district’s schools as well as some of the surrounding suburban schools. A professor from the
University of North Carolina and former superintendent of the Richmond, Virginia, and
Dayton, Ohio, public schools, Dr. Hunter’s 1987 report was thorough and troubling:
The school buildings are generally very old and in poor condition. The Kansas City,
Missouri School District has failed to obtain necessary financial resources from the
community and the state for proper maintenance, substantial renovation, or
replacement of the school buildings. Thus, some have become unserviceable. Over
the years, several unsuccessful attempts have been made to pass capital
improvements bond issues.82
At the time of the report, in January of 1987, the Kansas City, Missouri School District
consisted of eighty-one buildings, and the breakdown was as follows: fifty elementary
schools, eight junior high schools, nine high schools, and fourteen special or closed schools.
The average age of the buildings was 53.8 years, with eleven of the buildings having been
built seventy-five or more years before.83 Moreover, Hunter came to the conclusion that the
schools of the district adversely affected education and discouraged parents from enrolling
their children in the district, not to mention the fact that the buildings represented safety and
Richard C. Hunter Deposition, 11 November 1988, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II, Box D162.
82
Richard C. Hunter, “Kansas City, Missouri School District Long-Range Capital Improvement Plan”
(January 1987), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box 618.
83
198
health hazards.84 The report concluded that seventeen schools should be demolished, twentyone be constructed anew, and all of the buildings renovated for a projected cost of $265
million.85 Hunter’s assessment of Central High School represented both how decrepit the
schools of the Kansas City, Missouri School District had become and how massive Kansas
City, Missouri’s, magnet-themed project would be.
Hunter described Central High School as being in the worst condition of any of the
district secondary schools, suggesting that it was “deplorable.”86 In his deposition, Hunter
explained that Central required work on both the inside and outside. He suggested the
outside of the building needed “a lot of work,” but it was the inside that was most
distressing. Hunter suggested that Central was “just a depressing facility to walk in.” In
several parts of the building, paint was peeling from the walls and the ceiling was falling in,
a result of severe water damage. In the auditorium, Hunter claimed that the daylight peered
through a hole in the roof.87 Arthur Rainwater, principal at Central High School from 1987
to 1989 and later an assistant to the superintendent, remembered Central to be in terrible
condition when he assumed his position as principal: “My office was on the top floor of the
building and we had buckets out on the floor when it would rain. I mean it was really in bad
shape.”88
Central, however, represented merely one of many buildings that Hunter determined
needed to be rebuilt or renovated. Upon receipt of Hunter’s report, the school board
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid.
86
Richard C. Hunter Deposition.
87
Ibid.
88
Arthur Rainwater, conversation with author, 29 July 2013.
199
immediately approved it and subsequently sent it to the Desegregation Monitoring
Committee that did the same, as did Judge Clark. In a show of support for upgrading the
facilities of the Kansas City, Missouri School District, Clark, in a September 1987 ruling,
exercised the court’s “broad equitable power to remedy the evils of segregation” by ordering
a tax increase on the residents of Kansas City, Missouri.89 Clark’s reasoning was based on
the notion that the majority had no right to deny others their constitutional rights:
This Court, having found that vestiges of unconstitutional discrimination still exist in
the Kansas City, Missouri School District, is not so callous as to accept the
proposition that it is helpless to enforce a remedy to correct past violations. Failure
of the Kansas City, Missouri School District to come forward with its share of funds
to implement the remedial plan would certainly operate to hinder vindication of
federal constitutional guarantees to which the school children in the Kansas City,
Missouri School District are entitled. This Court cannot shrink its sworn duty to
uphold the Constitution of the United States....The Court is of the firm conclusion
that it has no alternative but to impose tax measures which will enable the Kansas
City, Missouri School District to meet its share of the cost.90
Thus, Clark imposed a 1.5 percent increase on the Missouri State Income Tax, which raised
the tax to 7.5 percent on residents and nonresidents of the Kansas City, Missouri School
District alike, as well as business associations, partnerships, and corporations who earned
salaries, wages, commissions and all other compensation subject to the Missouri State
Income Tax. Additionally, Clark raised the property tax of Kansas City, Missouri School
District residents by $1.95 per one hundred dollar assessed valuation, which amounted to
over twenty-seven million dollars annually.91
Clark’s decision resulted in an almost immediate backlash and cries of an imperial
judiciary. Just a year after the decision, the income tax surcharge was appealed and
89
Court Order, 17 September 1987.
90
Ibid.
91
Ibid.
200
overturned, but the increase in property tax withstood an appeal to the Supreme Court. By
1987, it appeared the district’s magnet plan was unfolding as well as could have been hoped
by its supporters. Judge Clark was fully supportive of the district’s Long Range Magnet
Plan, and the State of Missouri was being held responsible for much of the financial burden.
But 1987 was just the beginning, and perhaps no Kansas City, Missouri School District
school represents the magnet years better than Central High School.
Planning Kansas City’s Computers Unlimited/
Classical Greek Magnet High School, 1987-1988
Central High School was re-envisioned as a computers and classical Greek magnet,
and a task force was established in 1987 to iron out the details. Arthur Rainwater, Central’s
principal, who before assuming the principalship at Central had spent much of his career in
Catholic education, was hired by the Kansas City, Missouri School District for his expertise
in athletics and proficiency in technology:
My background was certainly in athletics, and I also had spent a lot of time working
with technology in schools. I was, at that time, very technology proficient, and so
that particular job appealed to me because of the dual magnet themes.92
Rainwater, who led the planning task force, remembered Central’s planning phase as
“fun,” though the job was a big one considering the scope of the project.93 Central was
designed with two academic tracks; one was constructed around computers and technology
and the other in classical Greek and athletics. Therefore, the new Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School was intended to meet the program-specific
needs of the new curricula.
92
Arthur Rainwater, conversation with author, 29 July 2013.
93
Ibid.
201
The computer side was planned with computers and technology at the core of
instruction, and as it was suggested in the Long Range Magnet Plan, “Computers unlimited
magnet schools will provide students with educational opportunities specifically in computer
technology and information technology to a greater extent than they are presently offered in
the Kansas City metropolitan area.”94 As such, the computers unlimited magnet schools
were planned to emphasize computer technology in all academic subjects, as computers
would be the “vehicle for communication, computation, and management.”95 The district
planned computers unlimited magnet programs at Richardson Elementary, Central Middle
School, and Central High School. Of critical importance for the computer magnet schools
was access. The availability of appropriate computer hardware and software was considered
essential to the implementation of the computer program.
At Central, all classrooms were designed to be equipped with twenty-five computers,
and the computers would, it was reasoned, be used in three ways: through academic core
classes, computer-themed classes, and direct instruction.96 Computers would serve as an
instructional tool in all traditional academic classes so that students would use computers as
everyday learning tools. In computer-themed classes, computers would provide a broad base
of computer knowledge, thus qualifying students for college, training programs, and job
entry, and the classes would be taught in “specially equipped laboratories.”97 The
management of instruction, it was suggested, would be one that revolved around computers
94
Hale and Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan.”
95
Ibid.
“Central High School Academic Program,” Central High School Task Force (January 1988), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box D153.
96
97
Ibid.
202
and technology, in which classrooms, teacher preparation spaces, laboratories,
administrative offices, and secretarial stations would all employ computers and promote a
paperless environment.98 It was also hoped that Central Computers Unlimited High School
would work in cooperation with the city’s leading businesses and universities to prepare
graduates for entry into college or directly into the workforce.99
The classical Greek side of the curriculum was based on the ideal of “a sound mind
in a sound body” and was designed to provide students with a strong liberal arts education
that featured philosophy, debate, forensics, and pursuit of Greek culture, in addition to a
unique and comprehensive athletic program that would be based on the Olympiad.100 It was
hoped that the classical Greek program would attract students, particularly suburban
students, interested in Olympic sport, such as aquatics, fencing, or martial arts. While it was
thought that Central would attract serious athletes, the school was open to students of all
athletic ability levels. The state-of-the-art facilities and top-notch coaches would allow all
students to reach their fullest potential and provide an opportunity for many to develop to a
nationally competitive level.101
The athletic program was designed to be demanding. As explained in the Long
Range Magnet Plan, students would be required to participate in one individual sport and
one team sport, which would be part of the student’s personal development plan utilized to
98
Ibid.
99
Hale and Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan.”
“Central High School Classical Greek Preliminary Program Narrative,” Central High School Task Force
(n.d.), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box D153.
100
101
Ibid.
203
maximize physical development throughout the student’s four years in high school.102 By
providing unique, Olympic athletic programs, it was reasoned that Central would offer
“tremendous opportunities for inner-city kids” while also attracting suburban students and
parents seeking to replace expensive and inconvenient out-of-school athletic programs, such
as swimming or gymnastics.103 The athletics program was split between two different paths,
one consisting of “interscholastic athletics” and the other, Olympic development.104 The
interscholastic pathway was designed for students wanting to compete in traditional high
school sports, such as basketball, baseball, or football. Students participating in
interscholastic sports, however, would be required to take part in two different sports, one of
which would be individual and the other team. The Olympic program was to include a
rigorous twelve-month training program in one sport, with the training designed to assist
students in reaching a high skill level in their sport of choice.105 But the classical Greek
magnet would not focus on only athletics, as the academic programming was claimed to be
attractive as well.
Central was the only school in the Kansas City, Missouri School District that would
offer a classical education. Rainwater suggested that the academics on the Greek side would
be particularly challenging: “I think you will find that the Greek program has probably the
most rigorous academic programs in the whole city.…The academic program, on the Greek
102
Hale and Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan.”
Arthur Rainwater Deposition, 2 November 1988, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson
II, Box D174.
103
104
“Central High School Classical Greek Preliminary Program Narrative.”
105
Ibid.
204
side particularly, is so demanding and so structured that it is every bit a co-equal part.”106
The emphasis on a strong academic curriculum was in part motivated out of fear that if a
solid academic program was not advanced at a magnet school that promoted athletics, it
would turn into a place to “dump” athletes.107 Therefore, the site task force designed the
classical Greek curriculum to include a required classical studies component. As part of the
classical studies, Central students would have to complete a sports biology class, as well as
classical Greek, philosophy, Greek art and archeology, Greek literature, and Greek drama.108
The task force seemed careful to ensure that the public perception of Central’s dual tracks—
computers and classical Greek—not be one of computers versus athletics but a dual
curriculum school designed for kids interested in computers and athletics with a common
purpose in academic excellence.
With the school’s computer and classical Greek programs taking shape, the task
force began seriously considering the building itself and concluded that “the specialized
nature of the curriculum at Central High School requires a unique building.”109 The Long
Range Magnet Plan had established overall standards for magnet program development,
including guidelines for a new Central High School, which was to provide exceptional
features that would attract white parents and students from surrounding private schools and
suburban schools to voluntarily choose to attend Central. To obtain the court-ordered forty
106
Arthur Rainwater Deposition.
Daniel Levine Deposition, 16 February, 1989, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box D174.
107
108
“Central High School Classical Greek Preliminary Program Narrative.”
109
“Central High School Academic Program.”
205
percent white enrollment, the scope of the programs were considered essential, as Central, it
was thought, would be a challenge to desegregate:
Central High School promises to be the most difficult school to desegregate, both
because of its location in the highly segregated central corridor of the city and
because its reputation as a problem school with a history of academic failure….In
order to attract white students, Central must offer an exceptional program in an
exceptional facility.110
Accordingly, the new Central High School was to be spacious and robustly equipped with
the latest in computer technology and sport and physical education equipment and facilities.
The new building’s design was certainly impressive, especially the natatorium,
which was planned to house all of the aquatic sports. The natatorium included a six foot-bysix foot underwater window with observation space, underwater speakers for synchronized
swimming, two one-meter diving boards, two three-meter diving boards, and platform
diving tower, a gutter system for overflow and circulation, hydrostatic relief system for
stabilization, and an automatic timing system with scoreboard.111 The aquatic facility was
intended for both school and community use in recreational and competitive swimming and
diving, as well as water polo and synchronized swimming.
In addition to the natatorium, the new Central would have a state-of-the-art field
house to accommodate gymnastics, basketball, and indoor track and field, among other
sports. The overall concept of the athletic facilities was to create an environment conducive
to attracting and developing young people for world-class competition levels.112 On the
110
Jenkins v. Missouri, “Plaintiff’s Post-Hearing Brief and Suggested Findings of Fact,” March 31, 1989,
State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box D237.
“Design Program Analysis for the New Kansas City Central High School, Kansas City, Missouri,”
Councilman/Hunsaker & Associates (March 1988), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II,
Box D503.
111
Thomas Eaton Meeting Notes (2 March 1988), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson
II, BoxD503.
112
206
computer side, the new building was to have roughly one thousand computers in total, with
fifteen computer-equipped classrooms, each having twenty-five computers in a perimeter
arrangement, as well as six computer-equipped science labs; several specialized computer
labs, including a graphic arts lab, robotics lab, electronics lab, drafting design lab, and two
business labs; four computer programming classrooms; and a computer mainframe or
resource room for Central students to use during extended-day opportunities.113
With the new building being planned to open during the 1991-1992 academic year,
Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School was going to be, its
supporters proclaimed, one of the best and most unique secondary schools in the nation.
Certainly, the new building’s design was impressive, but it was also expensive. The site
location had been decided in 1987, which was the least disruptive of the three sites
considered, as it required little in the way of additional land acquisition.114 The new building
essentially wrapped around the old building and was literally built within a few feet of it.
Originally, in 1986, the district estimated the new Central would cost $15,243,050, and the
court obliged. By 1988, however, the district began considering an increase in the
construction budget, which was approved by the court’s Desegregation Monitoring
Committee and eventually by Judge Clark. Thus, construction costs were raised by
$7,010,166, increasing the overall cost of Central from just over fifteen million dollars to
$23,474,615 .115 The State of Missouri vehemently opposed the measure:
One is left with the conclusion that the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s
motion to modify the construction budget regarding Central is the result of educators
113
Arthur Rainwater Deposition.
Final Site Report, Kansas City, Missouri School District (August, 1988), State Historical Society of
Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, D503.
114
115
Court Order, 26 April 1989.
207
creating a wish list. One can imagine the district educators reviewing the Court’s
approved programs and insisting on the inclusion of frill after frill, like sharks in a
feeding frenzy….It is an outrage that the district has chosen to make a sham of the
desegregation process, converting it into something resembling a money grab. 116
Despite the state’s opposition, the Kansas City, Missouri School District continued its
insistence that the new Central High School was within the parameters outlined by the Long
Range Magnet Plan, and Judge Clark routinely supported the assertion. As such, the
construction of the new Central High School moved forward as planned with a completion
date of fall 1991. Meanwhile, in the fall of 1988, the old Central High School opened its
doors as a computer magnet high school. A new era had begun.
Jenkins v. Missouri, “State’s Opposition to the Motion of the Kansas City, Missouri School District for
Approval of a Site for Central High School and for Increases and Modifications in the Budgets for Building
Construction and Equipment for the Magnet; Alternative Request for a Hearing” (December 1988), State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II, Box D503.
116
208
CHAPTER 8
A NEW ERA: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENT EXPERIENCE
AT CENTRAL COMPUTERS UNLIMITED/CLASSICAL
GREEK MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL, 1988-1999
The Computer Magnet, 1988-1991
Daryl Norton, a student at Central from 1986 to 1990, had long dreamed of attending
Central High School, a school that seemed almost bigger than life when he was a young boy.
Norton remembered how he desired to enter the old Central High School building that was
built in 1915:
It was this big, magnificent building. We used to go in the building, and I remember
from my cousin, we used to go in there with them, back in the seventies, you know,
late seventies. I was like, “Look at that,” and I was like “Man, this school is big.”
And even when I got here, I was like, “Well, it’s not as big as I thought it was,” but
then I thought, “It’s bigger than what I thought it was.” With the track, the indoor
track that was right above the basketball court. We used to think, “Man, that’s cool!”
You know, all this stuff…we were like, “Man, we are really about to be in here.1
Norton grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and lived just blocks away from Central High
School. Though Norton’s parents were present in his childhood, he grew up living with his
grandparents, who, he explained, were actively involved in his life and schooling and acted
as his mother and father: “That was momma and daddy to me…that’s exactly what I called
them.”2 Norton explained, too, that the support he felt growing up from his grandparents
extended beyond the walls of his home and into the neighborhood, which he described as
1
Daryl Norton, conversation with author, 27 September 2013.
2
Ibid.
209
“close” and “watchful.”3 Perhaps Norton benefited from a connected family, as Norton’s
grandfather, a former bodyguard for Booker T. Washington, began his career in Kansas City
as one of the first printers at the black newspaper, the Kansas City Call, before embarking
on a longtime career in education in the Kansas City, Missouri School District: “he was so
well connected and a lot of people, especially in the school district, the Kansas City School
District, knew my grandfather.”4 So Norton most definitely felt a certain loyalty to the
Kansas City, Missouri School District considering his grandfather’s history, but he had a
particular affection for Central, which had been instilled in him from the time he was in
elementary school:
I remember in elementary and they came and told us like, “Hey, you’re going to be
going to Central; we’re recruiting you now....But we were already eager to go there
anyway because that was our neighborhood school, you know, and my cousins went
there so I used to hear all this fun stuff they had…so many teachers lived in the
neighborhood. You know, the community, I mean like the school kind of funded a
lot of stuff that was around here.”5
So when Norton finally walked into Central High School on his first day as a freshman in
1986, he had realized a longtime dream—he had made it to Central High School, a school
that Norton had long held in high esteem.
Crystal Shakur, a graduate of Central’s class of 1989, was just a year ahead of
Norton in school and, like Norton, had grown up, for the most part, in the neighborhoods
around Central. Shakur was one of eleven children raised by a single mother who struggled
with alcoholism. Shakur’s father was never in her life, and her mother was merely somewhat
involved. Shakur explained that her mother did “as best she could,” but that her alcoholism
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
210
had taken a physical toll by the time she had entered Central High School and rendered her
mostly disengaged. Thus, the neighborhood community played an essential part in her life
and contributed to her feelings of connectedness to Central: “I remember feeling like
everybody kind of knew everybody, you know….Families kind of knew each other….”6 The
close-knit feel of the neighborhood carried over into the school, as Shakur described how
she and her friends would walk to one another’s houses and then proceed to Central High
School; she recalled it fondly:
I loved it because all my friends were there! I was very connected with Central. I was
one of the students that was kind of the leaders I guess, involved heavily with things
going on as far as student council—I was a cheerleader, you know, ran track—so I
was very connected with the school.7
Shakur remembered the teachers, the majority of them still black in the mid and late 1980s,
as “supportive” and “encouraging” and suggested that the teachers at the time knew how to
“pull your strings.”8 Shakur did feel emotionally supported by teachers, whom she said
would “get with you” in times of need, she did not always feel academically challenged:
There were some [teachers] that, to me, it felt like they would just give you busy
work. And maybe it was just me because I was in some of the other classes, I guess
you would say advanced courses or whatever. So those teachers really challenged
me, but in some of the others, not really.
Indeed, standardized testing data reveal that in 1985-1986, Shakur’s freshman year, Central
had fallen well below national norms in reading and math.9 The computer magnet program,
then, was designed to bring technology into the “vital role of enabling all students to be
6
Crystal Shakur, conversation with author, 5 December 2013.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
Evaluation of Reading and Math Objectives for the School Year, 1985-1986, Kansas City, Missouri
School District, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers, Box 182D.
9
211
challenged and at the same time experience success by allowing teachers to truly handle
individual differences.”10 So when Shakur entered Central High School for her senior year
in 1988, Central was no longer Central High School; it was the Central Computers
Unlimited Magnet. The school still occupied the old 1915 building, but it had received a
facelift and had been rewired to accommodate computer technology. The comprehensive
magnet plan was underway, but would it work—would it lead to greater integration and
improved academic performance?
Shakur recalled a thrust to incorporate computers into the curriculum her senior year,
1988-1999, the first year of the magnet program at Central:
It was pushed [computers] as part of the curriculum. I remember also, as a senior, a
half-day where we would go and work with, like, DST and different companies.
Back then, for those of us who had the credits to leave for a partial day or so, it was
pushed. I remember learning different programs. I remember COBOL, but I don’t
really remember how to do it right now, but you know. I just remember that they did
try to implement those things and try to direct us more toward using computers.11
It was understood by district administrators that the implementation of a new computerthemed magnet would take time. Arthur Rainwater explained the district’s cautious
optimism: “people expect an immediate turnaround, and that just isn’t going to happen. It is
going to take a long time to remedy the vestiges of desegregation that were here.”12 Thus,
students like Shakur, who were seniors during the first year of implementation, would not
benefit as greatly as students who entered Central Computers Unlimited as freshmen in 1988
and spent four full years in the program. The implementation phase, monitored by annual
Computers Unlimited Computers Magnet Outline: 1988-1989, Central High School Task Force, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers, D153.
10
11
Ibid.
12
Elizabeth L. Spaid, “‘Magnets’ Attract in Kansas City,” Christian Science Monitor, 15 June 1992, 12.
212
formative evaluations, was viewed as a three-year process, and success was to be reported in
a summative evaluation relying on achievement test results, interviews, and observations.13
The 1988-1989 formative report revealed how slowly the process of change might unfold.
While enrollment increased from 809 to 967, and the number of “non-minority” students
increased from one to thirty-seven or under one percent to four percent, student achievement
continued to lag well behind both district and state averages.14 The Long Range Magnet
School Plan emphasized the need for “major” improvements in the mathematics curriculum
and instruction.15 Central’s tenth grade students’ scores, for example, in the math portion of
the Missouri Mastery and Achievement Tests (MMAT) jumped from 249 to 282 between
1987 and 1989, but it was still ten points behind the district-wide average and nearly fifty
points behind the statewide average.16 Moreover, mean math and science scores across all
grade levels on the Tests of Academic Proficiency (TAP) were lower at Central than the
district-wide mean scores.17
Shakur, though recognizing the push to incorporate computers in the classroom and
acknowledging the availability of computer technology, did not notice a major difference in
her education nor in the facility after the magnet program had been initiated in 1988, despite
the roughly $37 million in capital improvements pursuant to the court’s 1985 order and over
Formative Evaluation of the Central Senior Magnet School Computers Unlimited, 1989-1990, Evaluation
Office, School District of Kansas City, Missouri, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II
Papers, Box 511.
13
14
Formative Evaluation of the Central Senior Magnet School Computers Unlimited, 1988-1989, Evaluation
Office, School District of Kansas City, Missouri, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II
Papers, Box 511.
15
Hale and Levine, “Long Range Magnet School Plan.”
16
Formative Evaluation of the Central Senior Magnet School Computers Unlimited, 1988-1989.
17
Ibid.
213
eight million dollar annual budget increase for magnet implementation:18 “The only thing
was that the programs just were different. That’s the only thing I noticed…I didn’t really
notice how the money may have come in.”19 Shakur was not particularly interested in
computers. A self-described “people-person,” Shakur claimed to have had some knowledge
of the magnet plan from her service on student council and even participated in a 1988
marketing campaign for the school. She and another student were featured on a poster
promoting the magnet theme at Central. Yet, Shakur never felt a passion for computers, but
the allegiance she felt to Central was too great to entice her to go elsewhere during her
senior year.
Unlike Shakur, Norton was very much interested in computers and welcomed the
new emphasis on computer technology, though Norton said that he really was not much
aware of the magnet plan or the impending court case until his senior year, the 1989-1990
school year.20 Norton recalled, specifically, a meeting with then principal of Central
Computers Unlimited, Arthur Rainwater:
He [Rainwater] talked to us first and let us know what was going on. And then he
said, “You guys are the stepping stone to the future”.…We had no idea that the court
thing was going on. When he came along and talked to us, he really emphasized, he
let us know, that, you know, you guys are going to be the ones graduating out of the
computer unlimited magnet school. You’re going to be the first and then we started
hearing a little bit of stuff here and there…that there was a court case…and we were
like, “Hey man, we love you [Rainwater] for this.” Because, I mean, it really did, it
improved our stuff so much. I mean, we still didn’t really know the full of it, but we
just, we were thankful for that…we started getting new stuff.21
18
Jenkins v. Missouri, “Motion for Approval of the Kansas City, Missouri School District Long-Range
Capital Improvement Plan” (1987), State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers, Box 511.
19
Crystal Shakur, conversation with author, 5 December 2013.
20
Daryl Norton, conversation with author, 27 September 2013.
21
Ibid.
214
Before the magnet money began coming into Central, Norton suggested that expectations
were unreasonable. “How can we [raise scores],” he asked, “if we don’t have the updated
material?”22 He noted that he recognized when the money began filtering in:
So each year it was like, you know, something new. We either got something new or
we got an improvement on something.…It helped a lot for a lot of us….We wouldn’t
have had the programs that we had. We had the explorer’s club, all the various clubs.
We were able to go do stuff. I mean go check out IBM, go check out AT&T, go to
these places that wouldn’t have been accessible for us if we didn’t have the
money.…Ah man, it made a lot of stuff easier.23
There was a commitment under the Long Range Magnet School Plan to provide Central
Computers Unlimited students and all district students an opportunity for practical
application and field experiences.24 Norton was involved in a group at Central known as the
Lanterns, which consisted of high-performing students who were interested in computerrelated careers. The Lanterns, as Norton described, served as technical support within the
school building: “if there was a computer problem, we had to go in. We had access to the
server. If something was going wrong with a program, we fixed it…basically, we were
doing what a network administrator does.”25
While Norton was feeling fulfilled outside of the classroom through the Lantern
program and outreach programs with local businesses in the community, he also felt
challenged in the classroom, something he attributed to teachers such as his English teacher,
Mrs. Lewis, a black woman, who, he stated, “did not play.”26 Norton described her style as
22
Ibid.
23
Ibid.
24
Hale and Levine, “Longterm Magnet School Plan.”
25
Daryl Norton, conversation with author, 27 September 2013.
26
Ibid.
215
“college preparatory,” in which she explicitly told students that she would have them ready
for college.27 Many teachers, Norton remembered, exemplified similar qualities: “A lot of
teachers had that power. They didn’t care who you were or how bad you were, but you were
in their class; you were their responsibility, and they would not play.” Despite Norton’s
fondness for his teachers, there was little change in the achievement test data between the
1988-1989 and 1989-1990 school years. In year two of the magnet program, tenth grade
students had tested below both district and state mean scores on the MMAT, and in fact, had
performed slightly worse in math and science in 1990 when compared to 1989. TAP scores,
however, revealed progress, especially in reading, in which Central students across all grade
levels showed improvement, and ninth graders, in particular, experienced substantial gains.
Thus, based on TAP scores, Central students’ achievement and proficiency in reading, math,
written expression, science, and social studies were catching up with district-wide mean
scores, but they were still performing well below national norms.28
Like student achievement data, integration data was revealing little in the way of
meaningful progress. The total number of students actually fell from 967 in 1988-1989 to
885 in 1989-1990, but the number of “non-minority” students increased, though only
modestly, from four percent to six percent.29 The magnet plan was only in its second year of
implementation, the data were less than impressive. But the program was still in its infancy,
and it was too early to determine success or failure. Meanwhile, students such as Shakur and
27
Ibid.
28
Formative Evaluation of the Central Senior Magnet School Computers Unlimited, 1989-1990.
29
Ibid.
216
Norton were graduating from Central after having experienced one and two years,
respectively, of magnet programming.
Shakur graduated as valedictorian of her 1989 class and had consistently taken
advanced classes at Central both before and after the magnet implementation. Upon
graduation, Shakur joined the Marine Corps as a reservist and subsequently headed off to the
University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. But Shakur would only spend a semester in
Columbia: “I was only there for a semester, and that’s when I found out that even though I
was taking all those challenging courses [at Central], they weren’t challenging.”30 Shakur
explained how she felt ill-prepared for college coursework and college life:
Got there [University of Missouri] and was making Cs. So I mean for me that was
devastating. I had never made Cs or a D. What is this? I realized even some of the
things like with literature and things like that we had not gotten….So I really didn’t
feel like I got enough exposure to things to prepare me. In math and sciences, I did
okay.31
Shakur returned to Kansas City after the fall semester of her freshman year and attended the
University of Missouri-Kansas City on a part-time basis, but family issues got in the way of
her schooling, and she found work in customer service and childcare. It was her work with
children that ultimately informed her career path.
Shakur explained how at Central her counselors always encouraged computers and
engineering as a result of her academic performance. She described it as, “You’re making
the grades for this, so you should go into that.”32 The “that” for Shakur was computers and
engineering, which she claimed to have little interest in pursuing. It was not until Shakur
30
Crystal Shakur, conversation with author, 5 December 2013.
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid.
217
began working in childcare that she realized her passion. Shakur would eventually find her
way back to college earning her associate’s degree by attending two area community
colleges, Penn Valley and Longview, before completing her bachelor’s degree at UMKC in
liberal arts in 2000. In 2010, Shakur earned her master’s degree in education from the
University of Phoenix and currently teaches kindergarten in the Kansas City Public Schools,
the very district she graduated from nearly twenty-five years ago. Although Shakur
associates her lack of college preparation with inadequate academic preparation at Central,
she still holds Central near and dear and claims that she was “very connected” with the
school, her teachers, and her peers.33 Shakur experienced only one full year of the magnet
program, but she seemed skeptical that more time under the magnet theme would have left
her better off academically. When questioned about whether more time in the magnet plan
might have yielded more rigor, she stated, “Well, I’m really not sure.”34
Norton, like Shakur, entered the military immediately following his graduation from
Central, despite having several scholarship offers to play collegiate football. The scholarship
offers, he explained, “fell through.”35 Thus, Norton entered the Navy as a communication
technician, where he utilized the knowledge and skills in computer technology that he
gained at Central Computers Unlimited Magnet:
I mean, it [knowledge of computers] helped when I was in the military…just the
simple fact of being able to look at a system and being a little bit familiar with it.
Knowing what a cable or fiber optic that you have to hook up…And for us to just
learn about it and know how to put it in, how to install it, you know, what to do if the
computer acts up. I mean, it really made it a lot easier. I wasn’t nervous to get into a
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
Daryl Norton, conversation with author, 27 September 2013.
218
computer or scared to try to figure it out. I mean, it really made it a lot easier for a lot
of us.36
Norton served in the military for over three years and found his preparation at Central
Computers Unlimited Magnet most helpful in readying him for life as a “radio man.” Norton
completed a tour of duty in Kuwait during Desert Shield/Desert Storm; he is now working
toward obtaining a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.
Whereas Shakur did not notice any major improvements in academics in her one
year at Central under the school’s newly initiated magnet plan, Norton found that the
computer magnet theme and the money that accompanied it improved the quality of
education at Central:
It [magnet money] gave the teachers a wider range to teach us…it made school a lot
more, I guess, it made it a lot more adventurous for us because it was always an
adventure because we didn’t know what was going to happen next. So each year it
was something new. We either got something new or we got an improvement on
something. I mean, it helped a lot for a lot of us, especially the upper advanced kids.
We wouldn’t have had the field trips…It really got to the point where it made me
even more want to know what’s out there. It made me really want to learn more
about what we had. When robotics hit…I’m like wow! They would do drafting…I
mean, it made it a lot easier for a lot of us.37
Norton’s experiences at Central Computers Unlimited Magnet were overwhelmingly
positive, though he did suggest that in 1990 during his second and final year at Central he
noticed a difference in the faculty, stating, “You could see the change coming when the
teachers started retiring. You started seeing the quality changing. You start getting these
young teachers, young white teachers.”38 Indeed, more white teachers were arriving at
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
219
Central in the early 1990s, who, by 1992, had reached nearly seventy percent.39 Yet, Norton
claimed that there was little he would change about his high school experience, other than
the fact that he graduated just before the new Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
building was opened:
I was really upset because we weren’t going to be the ones coming out of the
building, but I was really happy too that it was coming. And we said, “Man, for all
our hard work, you know, it’s about time they did something.” And I was just
thankful enough that the building was going to be there for my cousins…I loved it,
everything they had…I wish we would have had it. It probably would have elevated
us one hundred times even more.40
The highly anticipated and routinely criticized new Central opened its doors in the fall of
1991. While Norton missed the opening of the new building by a few months, Khadijah
Karriem-Hardaway, Christopher Slaughter, Melanie Evans, and Quincy Williams were
among the first students to graduate from the new Central Computers Unlimited/Classical
Greek Magnet School.
New Beginnings, 1991-1992
Just prior to the opening of the new Central building, the superintendent, George
Garcia, the eighth Kansas City, Missouri School District Superintendent in eighteen years,
resigned. His resignation was allegedly a result of a divided school board, which reflected a
citizenry skeptical of district capital improvements, financed in part through an increase in
property tax.41 The most extravagant of the capital improvements was the new Central
Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet, a school that was said to have rivaled many
39
Centralian, 1992.
40
Daryl Norton, conversation with author, 27 September 2013.
Bruce Rodgers, “A Good Guy Leaving a Tough Job,” Kansas City View, 2 November 1990, Missouri
Valley Special Collections, Kansas City, Missouri Superintendents, Vertical File.
41
220
colleges.42 Arthur Benson called it the “most phenomenal high school facility in the nation,”
speculating that it would be the “most” sought after high school in the district.43 The roughly
$33 million facility was welcomed by many but certainly not by everyone.44 A 1992 Kansas
City Star article labeled the new Central the school that Missouri taxpayers “love to hate,”
suggesting that it epitomized excess and was a “prime example of everything frivolous and
wasteful in a desegregation plan.”45 Yet, the new Central Computers Unlimited/Classical
Greek Magnet represented a new beginning for many students, including KarriemHardaway, Slaughter, Evans, and Williams, individuals from the graduating classes of 1992
and 1993.
Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway was one of nine children, and she, like all but one of
her siblings, graduated from Central High School. Growing up down the street from Central
at Thirty-Third Street and Benton Boulevard, Karriem-Hardaway long knew she would
eventually walk the halls of Central, stating: “Central was known for breeding family
members.”46 She recalled fondly the neighborhood in which she was raised, noting that she
knew every neighbor on her block and spent much of her time outside playing; she stated: “I
wish kids had what I had growing up, and that’s the ability to build relationships with one
another, exercise, you know, just feel the burn of being outside.”47 But Karriem-Hardaway
42
Spaid, “‘Magnets’ Attract in Kansas City.”
Tim O’Connor, “New Central High to Cost $32 Million,” Kansas City Star, n.d., A9, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central.
43
Jim Mosley, “Stunning: Kansas City’s New Central High Has It,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 February
1992, 4a.
44
Lynn Horsley, “KC’s Central High: The School Some Love and Some Love to Hate,” Kansas City Star,
10 May 1992, A1, A14.
45
46
Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
47
Ibid.
221
also recalled that the neighborhood had issues as well, most specifically the popularity of
crack cocaine in the early 1990s. She described how crack cocaine affected the
neighborhood and those close to her:
I witnessed that [beginning of crack cocaine]. I witnessed that, and I witnessed a lot
of my friends’ parents just sort of give away on them because of the drugs. And so,
that, that part of it, I wish I didn’t have to see, but we did.48
Karriem-Hardaway’s family eventually moved out of the Central High School
attendance area, but not by choice. An electrical fire during her junior year in high school
burned her family home to the ground, and while everyone escaped without injury, the
family was forced to move to another home, a home on Thirty-Fourth and Virginia nearer
Paseo High School. But as a result of the magnet theme, Karriem-Hardaway continued to
attend Central Computers Unlimited Magnet during her junior year before eventually
entering the new building, the Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet. The
so-called “vintage bunch,” Karriem-Hardaway noted, “we carried the history over into the
new building.”49
Christopher Slaughter, too, eventually enrolled at the new Central building in 19911992, but for Slaughter, unlike Karriem-Hardaway, attending Central was not a forgone
conclusion. Although he and his twin brother attended Kansas City, Missouri School District
schools for part of their elementary and middle-school years, their mother home-schooled
them for a while, and they attended private Christian schools, as well. “We moved schools a
lot,” Slaughter explained, which he attributed to the fact that his parents made education a
“huge” part of their lives and were always concerned about finding the best possible
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
222
education for him and his twin brother, as well as for his younger sister and brother.50 By the
time Slaughter entered high school, his mother and father had divorced, and his mom had
moved to Kansas and resided within the high-performing Shawnee Mission Public School
District:
When we moved out to Forty-Seventh, we had to go to a Kansas school, and my
mother always wanted us to go to a good school. So we went to Shawnee Mission
North my freshman year. I loved it; I loved Shawnee Mission North….We get into
this huge house, a five bedroom home. I mean I’m a kid in the inner-city and the
house we used to live in was only two bedrooms…we get to Forty-Seventh Terrace,
and there’s five bedrooms. We each have our own room. And, you know, we were
like, “Oh, wow, this is awesome!”51
Slaughter’s time at Shawnee Mission North was short-lived, however, as his mother
accepted a job in St. Louis in 1989 during Slaughter’s first year at North. Initially
Slaughter’s mother moved to St. Louis without the family, and his father moved into his
mother’s house in Kansas to take care of the children. But by the middle of Slaughter’s
freshman year, his mother requested that he and his siblings join her in St. Louis. Slaughter
was not happy about the move: “I fought it tooth and nail….I was in ROTC. I was on the
drill team. I was doing wrestling. I was doing very well in wrestling. I was just coming into
my own.” Despite Slaughter’s resistance, he did move to St. Louis during his freshman year,
to Olivet County just outside of Ladue, an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis.
Strangely, it was Slaughter’s move to Ladue High School in St. Louis that ultimately
landed him back in Kansas City and at Central High School. Ladue was a well-respected,
high performing high school and part of the St. Louis interdistrict student transfer plan,
St. Louis’s controversial voluntary desegregation program resulted in some African-
50
Christopher Slaughter, conversation with author, 30 September 2013.
51
Ibid.
223
American students attending suburban schools and some white students attending city
magnet schools.52 Slaughter never felt comfortable socially at Ladue, though he did
appreciate the academic rigor:
Well, they knew me as Clarence’s [Slaughter’s twin] brother because, well, Clarence
was popular because he would do crazy stuff, stupid stuff. I was trying to, you know,
keep my head above water, and Ladue was very challenging, and I loved it. It was
very challenging.53
Slaughter also continued with wrestling at Ladue, which he had started at Shawnee
Mission North High School. As fate would have it, wrestling—and a certain love interest—
introduced Slaughter to fencing:
While I was at wrestling—this is quite a funny story—there was a young lady who
was fencing at the time, and I saw her across the way. I thought, “Oh, wow, she’s
pretty cute.” So I wanted to go over and, you know, talk to her and the fencing
coach, who was Hungarian, a sabre coach, was like, “You know, if you want to be
over here you got to fence.” So I was like, “Okay.” So I tried it….It was fun. I got
pretty good at it.”54
As Slaughter’s passion for fencing grew, he joined the fencing club team at Ladue High
School. By the end of his sophomore year, Slaughter had gotten “pretty good” and competed
at the Midwest High School Championships in Phoenix, Arizona, where he learned of the
new fencing program at Kansas City’s Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet led by Vladimir Nazlymov.
Central’s state-of-the-art facilities and innovative classical Greek program, it was
hoped, would attract Olympic caliber athletes, as well as elite coaches. The classical Greek
program goals explicitly addressed the need for “highly qualified personnel” to enhance
52
The St. Louis interdistrict student transfer plan is the subject of Amy S. Wells’s and Robert L. Crain’s
book, Stepping over the Color Line: African American Students in White Suburban Schools (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997).
53
Christopher Slaughter, conversation with author, 30 September 2013.
54
Ibid.
224
“physical and mental development to the highest level.”55 One such individual was Willie
Mahone, who began his teaching career in the Kansas City, Missouri School District as one
of only a few black teachers at Southwest High School in the early 1970s. He was
transferred to Central High School in 1982, where he would serve in administration until
1994. Before he assumed his position at Central, Mahone was aware of its negative
reputation and was reluctant to make the change, but once he arrived, he described how he
“fell in love” with Central and its students:
I heard a lot of the stuff….But then after I got there after a while, I just got immersed
in stuff. I took a class over and started coaching, and I just got involved with the
kids. And after that, it was all over. You know, I loved Central after that.56
In 1991, Mahone became the program administrator for the Greek programs; he
remembered his initial excitement about the program and how Central was attracting some
of the nation’s best coaches:
The swimming coach was Bill Shalley. He used to have all of those championships
teams out at Blue Springs, and he came…Tom Garabedian came…and he was the
diving coach. Mary Phyl Dwight came as the team handball coach, and she was an
Olympian…She’s a Kansas City girl, and she came. The weightlifting coaches we
got from the University of Kansas. They were trainers there at Kansas. We got two
of them, and they came over to our weightlifting program. Tennis coaches we
brought a guy in that was very prominent, Skip, he’d been to the U.S. Open and all
that kind of stuff…and Fred Johnson who [is] now the director of tennis for the
Missouri Valley.57
The coaching staff at Central was impressive, but perhaps no coach garnered as much
attention and respect as the fencing coach, Russian native, Vladimir Nazlymov.
Program Goals, Central High School Task Force, 1990, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II Papers, Box D153.
55
56
Willie Mahone, conversation with author, 24 October 2012.
57
Ibid.
225
Currently the head fencing coach at Ohio State University, Nazlymov, a three-time
Olympic gold-medalist and ten-time world champion fencer, joined Central in December of
1991 after having served as the Soviet national team coach for years.58 Following the
district’s December 1991 press release announcing Nazlymov’s employment, Central’s
fencing coach at the time, Steve Butler, called the hiring “the most significant event in
American fencing history.”59 And in an editorial in the Kansas City Star, one Kansas City
resident, upon hearing of Nazlymov’s hiring, claimed, “[M]y faith in educational and
political leadership and use of tax money was restored.”60 Nazlymov moved from Moscow
to New York in 1990 to be closer to his son, who had received a fencing scholarship at Penn
State. Nazlymov had been offered a job with the prestigious New York Athletic Club, but he
decided to join Kansas City’s Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet. This
curious decision may have been motivated by his displeasure with how the New York
program was being run and the desire for a new challenge.61 Indeed, Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet, a school in Kansas City’s urban core, qualified as quite a
challenge for an individual who spoke almost no English and had never stepped foot in
Kansas City, let alone Kansas City’s urban core.
So everything seemed to be going according to plan for the 1991-1992 school year,
Central’s first year implementing its dual computer and Greek program. An impressive list
of coaches headlined by Vladimir Nazlymov had been assembled, and the new high school
58
Vladimir Nazlymov, conversation with author, 22 July 2013.
59
Clarence Hill, Jr., “Soviet Fencing Coach Joins Central Faculty,” The Kansas City Star, 19 December
1991, D5.
Diane Stephenson, “Fencing is Much More Than a Sport,” Kansas City Star, n.d., Missouri Valley
Special Collections, Schools-Public, Central.
60
61
Vladimir Nazlymov, conversation with author, 22 July 2013.
226
building was fully operational with all of the amenities necessary to train future Olympians,
as well as abundant computer technology. Karriem-Hardaway described the new building,
finished in 1991, as “highly sophisticated” and suggested that once the new building was
completed, the improvements were evident:
You could see the benefit of the money. You saw it right away because of course we
were the first class; we did see it. I don’t know about the generations behind us, but
we saw new uniforms, we saw new balls, new everything. Everything about the
school was new, brand new.62
Slaughter, too, upon his transfer to Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet
from St. Louis’s affluent Ladue High School, noticed almost immediately that Central was
well resourced: “Central High School had everything you needed. Everything. I had to buy
all of my stuff at Ladue. Ladue [fencing] was a student-sponsored club. At Central High
School it was a team. Totally different.”63 Students like Slaughter and Karriem-Hardaway
were relishing their new surroundings and enjoying participating in athletics that were
robustly supported with the latest uniforms and equipment, but they recognized that the
improvements masked some underlying deficiencies.
Even before Slaughter arrived at Central, he was exposed to the harsh reality of
magnet quotas. The Long Range Magnet Plan had established a lofty goal of reaching a
student enrollment of forty percent white and sixty percent students of color. Considering
that Central was over ninety-nine percent black in 1988, achieving such a ratio was
obviously going to pose quite a challenge.64 Despite efforts to avoid a two-tiered system of
elite magnet schools by transforming all of Kansas City, Missouri School District secondary
62
Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
63
Christopher Slaughter, conversation with author, 30 September 2013.
64
“Formative Evaluation of the Central Senior Magnet School Computers Unlimited, 1988-1989.”
227
schools into magnets, a certain reality existed at schools like Central; more white students
were needed to meet the forty-sixty goal to be met by 1998.65 Slaughter reflected on his
difficulty as an African-American getting into Central, despite his strong desire to
participate in fencing:
They would only take so many black kids. If you were a white kid, go ahead. Go to
Central. If you’re an Asian kid, go to Central. Hispanic kid, go to Central. If you’re a
black kid, I’m sorry, we’re full. That’s how they did with schools at the time…I
remember myself and my father and the fencing coach walking into the Kansas City
School District headquarters and my Dad saying to them and the coach saying to
them, “He was guaranteed a spot; we want him in this school.” They’re like, “No, he
can go to Lincoln. He can go to Paseo.” “I don’t want to go to Lincoln; I don’t want
to go to Paseo. I want to go to Central.”
Although the district refused to admit Slaughter, Steve Butler, the fencing coach at the time,
found a way to get him admitted; he was forced to enter the computer side but was still
allowed to participate in fencing.
Certainly, one of the major criticisms of Kansas City’s magnet plan, especially
among many in the black community, was the favoritism shown to white suburban students.
As early as 1989, in fact, parents of black students sued the Kansas City, Missouri School
District, alleging that the desegregation plan was denying black students access to the best
public schools.66 Yet, supporters of the magnet plan, including Arthur Benson, continued to
champion the magnet approach, reasoning that magnetizing the entire district afforded all
students, both black and white, the greatest opportunity. But even Benson acknowledged
that in order for desegregation to occur at the level hoped, the magnet schools would have to
attract white students from area schools: “We didn’t want to call it that, but in effect, it was
65
Spaid, “‘Magnets’ Attract in Kansas City.”
66
“Suit Says Magnet Schools Bar Black Children,” New York Times, 3 August 1989, A14
228
whites only [who] could transfer into the school district for the purposes of integration”67 By
the 1991-1992 school year, Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet housed
862 students in computers and 240 in classical Greek. Thirteen percent of those enrolled in
the Computers Unlimited Magnet were “non-minority,” whereas thirty-one percent in
classical Greek were “non-minority.”68 Thus, if considering the entire building of 1,102
students, Central was roughly seventeen percent “non-minority” during the 1991-1992
school year, an impressive statistic considering that Central had been nearly one hundred
percent black just several years prior.
Karriem-Hardaway, who describes herself as an activist, was skeptical of the magnet
plan when she was a senior at Central, and she remains skeptical today. While she did not
recall many white students during her time at Central, she viewed the magnet plan as a
scheme to encourage whites to move back to the urban core, thus displacing African
Americans: “To me, it was designed to separate people…so that white natives or people of
this city could move back into the inner-city and take it over.”69 As part of the high school
exchange program, Karriem-Hardaway was able to witness first-hand education in the
suburban schools, and she noticed a marked difference from the education she was receiving
at Central:
Lee’s Summit only had one high school and we exchanged, we had our exchange
program with them….And just to see the difference in everything, just everything. I
mean, from the way they were taught to the classroom sizes. From the way they were
arranged amongst each other was just different…and the fact that when you went to
67
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
68
“Summative Evaluation of the Central Computers Unlimited Magnet High School, 1988-1992,”
Evaluation Office, School District of Kansas City, Missouri; “Formative Evaluation of the Central Classical
Greek Magnet High School, 1991-1992,” Evaluation Office, School District of Kansas City, Missouri, State
Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers, Box 511.
69
Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
229
lunch the difference in the nutritional value of the food you got versus what you got
in our school”70
Karriem-Hardaway was less than impressed with the education she received at Central, even
after the magnet plan was implemented. She explained that her parents were not particularly
interested in her schooling and that she was not pushed to excel; she claimed that she
“skated” by and was a victim of false support, in which she was allowed to be a mediocre
student because she was a gifted athlete and was winning track championships at a school
that was built to promote athletics.
Slaughter, too, found the academic program at the new Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet to be desperately wanting:
At Ladue [St. Louis] there was an expectation to be educated, at Central there
wasn’t. I mean, to give you an idea, in my senior year at Central High School my
English book was the same as my sophomore English book at Ladue…they were
doing, you know, how to conjugate verbs into sentences and break sentences down,
basic grammar stuff. I was expecting to do advanced papers and stuff like that….My
educational life at Central High School really wasn’t much. It really wasn’t much at
all. I got more education from Vladimir Nazlymov than I did from all of those
classes [I took].”
Yet despite receiving what he described as a “weak” academic education, Slaughter
suggested that Nazlymov’s fencing program made Central well worth the gamble. “He took
care of us,” Slaughter proclaimed, in reference to Nazlymov, “like we were his own kids.”71
So while Slaughter was not aware of the details of the ongoing Jenkins case when he arrived
at Central, he knew that Central had a well-financed fencing program with an internationally
recognized coach, and that combination was enough to convince him that Central had what
he needed. It was a decision that Slaughter described as “life-changing” and ultimately one
70
Ibid.
71
Christopher Slaughter, conversation with author, 30 September 2013.
230
that significantly impacted his career path.72 Slaughter, after graduating from Central, still
had his eye on the Olympics and tried to make it in fencing. Though he was at one point
ranked as high as sixteenth in the nation, he simply ran out of money; he could not fund his
fencing, and he no longer had the Kansas City, Missouri School District to pay for expensive
national and international travel. He took a job with Costco, got married, and had kids. But
fencing and Vladimir Nazlymov had a profound influence on Slaughter’s life, and he felt the
desire and need to get back into the sport he loved. After starting Black Star Fencing in
St. Louis for junior fencers years ago, Slaughter is back in Kansas City and looking to begin
a youth fencing program in the city where he honed his own craft.
Karriem-Hardaway’s athletic ability and performance at Central landed her a track
scholarship at Park University in Kansas City, but college was never really on her radar.
Karriem-Hardaway wanted to be a cosmetologist, but she gave in to her parents’ demands
and attended Park. Her time at Park University, however, was brief. “I was just a resident,”
she explained.73 Instead of attending class, Karriem-Hardaway spent her days doing hair,
and today she owns her own hair salon. Karriem-Hardaway still maintains an activist spirit,
exhibiting today the same passion that caused her to question the magnet remedy when she
was a student at Central. Karriem-Hardaway takes great pride in being a Central alumna; she
stated: “I am proud to have graduated from Central High School, and I wouldn’t change it,”
though she quickly followed up with, “I would have liked to change the educational
experience a little bit.”74
72
Ibid.
73
Khadijah Karriem-Hardaway, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
74
Ibid.
231
In Full Swing, 1992-1995
Melanie Evans is a business analyst for a large bank where she daily relies on her
computer technical skill—knowledge she attributes, in part, to her experiences at Central
Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet. It came as no surprise to those close to
Evans that she ended up in an occupation involving computer technology, as she had been
interested in computers from the time she was an elementary student:
I think I started being interested in computers in elementary because I kind of almost
remember—I went to D.A. Holmes, and we had a little quasi-computer lab. We had
the first Apple, little bitty Apple computers. And I believe I got interested there….I
think where I really was wanting to do computers was when I got to Central, and we
were able to actually write programs in BASIC.75
Evans grew up on Kansas City’s eastside, and her entire family graduated from Central High
School. While Evans was interested in computers, it was her neighborhood ties to Central
and not its computer program that was the deciding factor in her attending Central over one
of the other district magnet programs. She explained, “I grew up in a time where everybody
in the neighborhood went to your school, so you kind of want to stay with your friends…it
was just a natural progression.”76 Evans really felt the support of the community:
We all came from the community where the community watched you…Even down
there. Growing up down there, we knew each other. We knew the families.
Everybody knew one another, so we knew the importance of at least graduating.77
Graduating in 1993, Evans was among the first students to experience a full complement of
Central middle and Central high school computer curriculum, and she recalled writing
computer programs at Central Middle Magnet School Computers Unlimited, which she
75
Melanie Evans, conversation with author, 30 July 2013.
76
Ibid.
77
Ibid.
232
claimed got her “very interested” in computers and excited about Central’s newly
implemented high school computers unlimited magnet.
Beginning at Central High in 1989, Evans experienced two years in the old building
and two years in the new building, and although she described the old Central High School
as in “pretty good shape,” she did recall hot summer and fall days in school without air
conditioning. Evans, however, would have air conditioning and more when she returned
from summer vacation and entered her junior year: “I just remember my sophomore year
ending and just showing up the next year at the new building…it was very nice.”78 Evans
especially appreciated the new computers and computer wing, though she was not impressed
with the district’s magnet approach, a plan that she, like Karriem-Hardaway, thought of as a
way to “get people back into the inner-city” but not necessarily strengthen the education.79
She elaborated:
It was just like, oh we’re going to build all these schools and, you know, if you like
to dance, go here; if you like to do this, go here. And I don’t know that was really a
good idea. So did it make sense to spend the money on that? Or, does it make sense
to spend money on really beefing up the education?80
Evans felt the magnet schools should have been implemented as a college preparation
program, and the core curriculum should have been modified to incorporate more rigor. Yet,
in spite of her criticisms of the curriculum, Evans was appreciative of the efforts of Central’s
teachers, who, she explained, “tried for every kid…and made sure they had access to
everything.”81 Evans particularly benefited from some of the veteran teachers, most of them
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
81
Ibid.
233
black. However, more and more young white teachers would be hired in subsequent years.82
Mahone, classical Greek program administrator, remembered some of the young teachers
who were brought in during the magnet years:
They [Kansas City Missouri, School District] brought all of these people in from
these different places that didn’t stay long…because they were from Princeton, you
know, at these private schools and stuff like that. And they just weren’t used to
inner-city kids.83
Along with young white teachers who were arriving in the early 1990s to teach in the new
magnet schools like Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet, were more and
more white students.
Quincy Williams, a classmate and friend of Evans’s on the classical Greek side,
recalled more diversity in athletics his senior year, 1993, than years previous:
I mean, I knew there was integration because I remember especially like our soccer
team and our wrestling team was very diverse. So you know, definitely, there was
only four, maybe five black people that played soccer, and so the rest were definitely
white….So you definitely saw the integration on that behalf. As you reflect back
years now, it was actually very diverse. A lot more diverse than I remember back in
the day.84
Williams was most certainly correct. In 1993, Central was as diverse as it had been since
1959; it was roughly twenty percent white.85 The numbers were even more impressive when
considering the classical Greek program alone. Twenty-eight percent of the 279 students in
September of 1992 were classified “non-minority.”86 As such, Central appeared to be
82
Centralian, 1993-1997.
83
Willie Mahone, conversation with author, 24 October 2012.
84
Quincy Williams, conversation with author, 2 August 2013.
85
Arthur Benson, unpublished demographic data.
“Process/Product Evaluation (Formative): Central Classical Greek Magnet High School, 1992-1993,”
Evaluation Office, School District of Kansas City, Missouri, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II Papers, Box 511.
86
234
making real progress toward the district goal of forty percent “non-minority.” The districtwide statistics, however, were far less encouraging. In 1993, high school enrollment showed
no significant gain in white enrollment, and elementary magnet white enrollment grew by
less than one percent; across all grade levels, the “minority” enrollment increased by less
than one-half percent.87 Central’s progress toward desegregation goals was indeed notable,
but it was only half of the equation; the other half was academic achievement.
Williams, one of five children and a self-described “military brat,” moved around
quite a lot when he was growing up. He and his family lived in the Philippines, South Korea,
and Italy, as well as in Nebraska, Mississippi, and Missouri, before eventually settling in
Kansas City. Williams was a fifth-grader when his family moved to a house on Forty-Fifth
and Montgall which was closer to Paseo High School than it was Central High School, but
with the magnet philosophy firmly in place when he went to middle-school, Williams chose
to attend Central. So like his classmate, Evans, Williams received a full complement of
magnet schooling from middle school onward; he first attended Central Middle Magnet
School Computers Unlimited before moving on to Central Computers Unlimited/Classical
Greek Magnet High School. Starting off in the old building and part of the computer magnet
program, Williams switched to the Greek side his junior and senior years in the new
building. An athlete, Williams was interested in the Greek magnet theme and ultimately
participated in several sports, including cross-country, soccer, wrestling, and baseball. He
was particularly impressed with Central’s sporting facilities, explaining that as he continued
wrestling in college, the facilities at Central were far superior to what he experienced at
Missouri Valley College: “Our weight room, having an indoor track, having ropes, having
Mary Esselman memo to Pauline Moley, 1993, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II
Papers, Box 185D.
87
235
all that stuff available and accessible to you at any time [at Central]. We didn’t get that stuff
[at Missouri Valley College] until my senior year.”88 Williams was also involved in student
government and student council, as well as serving as class treasurer, and as he described it,
his active involvement in school life resulted in many positive relationships with teachers
and administrators: “Quite a few of them invested a lot of their time and energy into me.”89
It was the strong bonds formed with Central faculty that led Williams to proclaim that his
experiences at Central were generally “positive,” though he did not feel consistently
challenged academically.
Central’s 1993 MMAT results, which included both themes, dropped in every
category; math, English, science and social studies when compared to 1992 data, and all
scores but math were below district averages; they were well below state averages. 90
Williams’s comments about the academics at Central and more generally, the district,
support the data:
Because I grew up in the military, my academics were, I’ve got to say it, were far
superior compared to my counterparts. So a lot of my peers, even though they were
in high school, some of them were reading on a seventh or eighth grade level. When
I got to Kansas City, when I was in elementary school they didn’t have anything for
me to challenge me as far as math, science, and reading…so before gifted and
talented, it was just stuff that I had already learned.91
However, Williams did add that once he identified the most challenging teachers at Central
he was pushed harder: “When I found the right teachers to challenge and push me, I was
88
Quincy Williams, conversation with author 2 August 2013.
89
Ibid.
90
“Process/Product Evaluation (Formative).”
91
Quincy Williams, conversation with author, 2 August 2013.
236
definitely challenged. There are definitely some who challenged me more than others.”92
Williams took advanced placement classes in math and English, but he recalled still feeling
inadequately prepared, specifically in English, once in college. In reference to his college
preparation, Williams stated:
From the science aspect of things, I think I was definitely prepared. I think I was
from a peer support, being able to socialize, I think I was definitely prepared. You
know being able to navigate the waters, definitely prepared. The one thing that I
would say that I wish would have been done differently, even though I did AP
English, when I got to college, I found out I couldn’t write.93
Evans, too, found English a challenge in college, particularly English literature, which she
attributed to lack of preparation in high school:
Literature was not something taught; I don’t think. It was English. It’s called
English, maybe English composition. But I kind of remember reading like, the big
book at the time was Malcolm X. But I’m talking about the great literary works.
Never cracked those…I was exposed to a couple of the Shakespearean plays, but that
just was a very tiny component of English literature. I mean even some of the great
works now: Lord of the Rings. Didn’t hear of it until it became a movie, knew
nothing about it. I’m just trying to think. Things like that where all the other kids
have things that they were well versed in it and knew all about it. We never knew
anything of that.94
Nonetheless, both Williams and Evans still today have a certain affection for Central and
feel that Central’s magnet program presented opportunities and experiences that were
beneficial. Williams claimed that he “liked the magnet aspect” of his high school experience
and “wouldn’t change a thing.”95 Likewise, Evans suggested that Central “cultivated” her
interest in computers. Both Williams and Evans have found professional success.
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid.
94
Melanie Evans, conversation with author, 30 July 2013.
95
Quincy Williams, conversation with author, 2 August 2013.
237
Williams graduated from Central in 1993 and headed directly to Missouri Valley
College, where he earned his bachelor of arts degree in human service agency management
and recreation administration before moving on to Lindenwood University in St. Charles,
Missouri and receiving a master’s degree and education specialist degree in educational
leadership. After working with a national not-for-profit for four years, Williams eventually
landed a position in higher education at Grand Valley State University, where he currently
serves as the Undergraduate Program Coordinator for the School of Public, Non-profit, and
Health Administration. Though Williams resides in Michigan, his parents still live in Kansas
City, and he continues to follow the happenings with his alma mater, a school that he claims
has affected him in a positive way.
Evans graduated alongside Williams and then enrolled at Penn Valley Community
College in Kansas City, where she spent one semester before entering the workforce. Not
long thereafter, however, Evans was back in college, but this time at Rockhurst University.
At Rockhurst, Evans’s six years in a computer-themed magnet program at Central Middle
and Central High served her well; she earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and
then landed a job with Associated Wholesale Grocers as a programmer before entering her
current position in business analysis with UMB Bank. Since assuming her position at UMB,
Evans returned to school and received a master’s degree in managing information systems at
Friends University. Evans always intended to go to college and was a driven student; she
conceded that she likely would have gone to college with or without the magnet curriculum,
but she remains appreciative of the opportunities that Central’s well-resourced computer
magnet program provided.
238
The 1993-1994 academic year marked the beginning of the third full year of magnet
programming in the new Central senior building. Student enrollment was holding steady at
twenty percent white, still well below the forty percent goal, yet vastly improved from
previous decades during which Central was consistently ninety-nine to one hundred percent
black. Academic achievement, however, showed little improvement from 1988 to 1993. Yet,
district officials had articulated early on that magnet success would take time. What
remained to be seen was how long it would take. Patience among district constituents was
thinning, and the media were growing increasingly more critical of the expensive magnet
program, especially at Central, where the elaborate new building was often targeted as
excessive. Still, as of 1993, the new Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet
High School had not produced a graduating class who had experienced four years of high
school magnet programming. The first class to graduate having spent four years in the new
Central High School was the class of 1995.
The Class of 1995
Terrence Lasker did not live in the Central attendance area but was attracted to the
Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School for its computer
program and brand new building, which he described as “amazing” and “unrivaled,”
claiming: “It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my school life.”96 Lasker hoped to
someday find a career in computer programming, which made the bus ride from SixtyEighth and Prospect where Lasker lived north to Central at Thirty-Second and Indiana well
worth the journey. Lasker’s parents, whom he described as committed to placing education
first, were fully supportive of him attending Central High School. Lasker said that he
96
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
239
transitioned into Central nicely and made friends quickly, partly because Lasker joined
Central’s fencing team soon after he arrived. Though he did not have a background in
fencing, Lasker had participated in karate earlier in his childhood. He was not necessarily
interested in fencing but was talked into it:
Actually when fencing was introduced, I didn’t really, I did enjoy it, but I didn’t plan
to go out for the team. The coach at the very start of the year [Steve Butler] promised
me that we would do a lot of travelling if I joined the team.”97
As promised, the fencing team did travel, and the decision to join the fencing team would
prove to be a life-changing decision for Lasker; he recalled that his first trip with the fencing
team was to Vail, Colorado:
The very first trips we took were on charter busses, and we went to Colorado. We
went to Vail, Colorado. That’s the very first place that we went, and it was very
exciting for all of us. I think that’s really where a lot of the bonds happened, I mean
all of those bonds lasted the whole four years. I met my best friend on that trip,
actually, and well, you know, we’re still friends today. He’s a doctor of chiropractic
medicine in California, and he’s actually currently at the world championships
because he’s the head trainer for U.S. fencing.98
In time, the fencing trips became more extravagant, including several trips to Europe: “We
spent a lot of time in Paris. We went to Hungary. We went to Rome.”99 Indeed, the districtfunded fencing trips for the school’s top fencers, their coach, Vladimir Nazlymov, and the
program administrator, Willie Mahone, to places like Spain, Germany, and Italy, which were
not cheap. According to a district memo, a trip to Germany for four people, two students and
two adults, from November 25 through December 6 was estimated to cost around seven
97
Ibid.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
240
thousand dollars.100 While travel for the fencing team was most impressive, the weightlifting
team and swimming team traveled extensively, too. Mahone claimed that he had been “all
over the world” with weightlifting, fencing, and swimming teams: “I’ve been
everywhere….We traveled everywhere; I mean, in style too…we traveled first class.”101 The
fencing and weightlifting teams, however, were performing at a very high level. Lasker, by
1993, was the top-ranked fencer in the United States in under-seventeen sabre, had won the
gold medal in the February 1993 Junior Olympics, and finished sixth in the world in undertwenty sabre.102 Additionally, the men’s and women’s weightlifting teams were Kansas City
High School weightlifting team champions; the women’s team placed third at the United
States Junior Weightlifting Championships, as well as the AAU National Junior Olympic
Championships; the men finished second at the AAU National Junior Olympic
Championships and the Canadian Interprovincial Championships.103 Central, especially in
fencing and weightlifting, seemed to be living up to the school’s goal to “train students to
their potential in athletics, with the possible outcome for an outstanding athlete or Olympiclevel participation.”104 In fact, by 1995, the entire junior national team in fencing, Lasker
explained, were Central graduates and products of Nazlymov’s fencing program: “It was
Walter Marks memo to the Board, 9 November 1993, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II Papers, Box 185D.
100
101
Willie Mahone, conversation with author, 24 October 2012.
United States Fencing Press Release, 2 March 1993, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A.
Benson II Papers, Box 185D.
102
103
“Olympic Style Weightlifting Program, Central Senior High,” Press Release, 23 December 1993.
104
Arthur Rainwater Deposition, 2 November 1988.
241
very shocking for the rest of the country to have the entire national team from our inner-city
high school in Kansas City, Missouri.”105
Lasker, despite his participation in fencing, remained on the computer side of the
Central programming, a so-called “hybrid” because he was in the computer magnet but
participated in an individual Olympic sport as well.
Monika Anderson, Lasker’s classmate and also a graduate of Central’s class of 1995,
was not so fortunate. Anderson had hoped to enter Central on the computer side but was not
given the opportunity. She explained that she came to Central High from a Spanish magnet
and was told that students entering Central Computers Unlimited Magnet High School from
one of the computer magnet feeders would get priority, so Anderson entered Central on the
classical Greek side; she was committed to attending Central, a “family high school,”
stating, “I always knew I wanted to go to Central High School.”106 Anderson’s family
moved out of the Central attendance area when she was a freshman, but she continued
attending Central and was able to do so as a result of the magnet system. Like Lasker,
Anderson depicted her education at Central in a positive light, even portraying it as
“great.”107 Anderson, however, was a committed student and found that the education she
received at Central was a reflection of her dedication and hard work; she stated, “I think it
was all in how well you applied yourself.”108 For Anderson, it was an intrinsic motivation,
as her parents were not particularly involved or supportive of her schooling. Anderson’s
mother, she explained, never really had to worry much about her school performance and
105
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
106
Monika Anderson, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
107
Ibid.
108
Ibid.
242
thus remained mostly on the periphery. Her father left the home when Anderson was in fifth
grade and was never involved nor concerned with her schooling.
Whereas Anderson’s parents did not provide a strong support network, Central’s
teachers, Anderson suggested, did: “I feel like I was very supported…I feel like the teachers
were very supportive.”109 Lasker, like Anderson, found the learning environment at Central
to be a positive one:
The teachers made it easy. I’m sure that I had the best math teacher that I’ve ever
had at Central High School.…Math and science were always my favorites, and the
computer classes that I was able to take went very well. I mean, I don’t really have a
comparison as I didn’t attend another high school, but I mean, I felt like the
environment was conducive to learning. And I know that the teachers were certainly
making an effort.110
In 1995, the majority of Central’s teachers were white, and Anderson remembered an
instance when race affected her schooling, a particular disagreement she had with one of
Central’s white teachers:
I took an elective my senior year, and it was the yearbook. And she had said, “This
year, I really want to focus on getting exposure to the white students here because
you don’t see much of them, or you don’t know about them or what they’re doing.”
And I remember making a comment to her, “I’m sure if you go to Shawnee Mission
North you’re not going to see many black students in their yearbook either.”111
Anderson explained how she was hurt by this particular teacher’s thought process. Despite
the teacher being one of her favorites, Anderson dropped the class out of principle. She was
angered with idea of highlighting only white student success in a school that was still in
1995 overwhelmingly majority black at eighty-one percent.112 Percentages at Central had
109
Ibid.
110
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
111
Monika Anderson, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
112
Arthur Benson, unpublished demographic data.
243
hovered around eighty percent black and twenty percent white between 1992 and 1995, but
by 1997 the gap had widened with a student population of only twelve percent white. The
percentage of white students continued to fall in subsequent years. It is not surprising, then,
that Anderson did not recall a noticeable increase in the number of white students at Central
during her time there, though she suggested that certain sports, such as fencing, did attract
mostly white students.
Lasker was indeed one of only a few black fencers at Central, as he explained,
“There was me, and there were a couple of others [black fencers] that kind of flowed in and
out.”113 He estimated that at the height of fencing’s popularity at Central, twenty percent of
the fifteen or sixteen students were black. The others, the white fencers, Lasker suggested,
were coming from all over Kansas City:
My best friend, he was coming from Independence, Missouri. We had, oh my gosh,
we had people coming from Blue Springs…they were coming from pretty far. And I
remember they took taxis. There wasn’t a bus that went that far, so yeah, they had
taxis pick them up from Blue Springs and from Independence.114
Taxis were most certainly widely used by the Kansas City, Missouri School District to
transport white suburban students to district schools, and the cost was heavy. Transportation
costs alone, which included busing and taxi services, were estimated to cost the State of
Missouri around thirty million dollars per year, and it was a constant source of friction. 115
Yet, white suburban residents like Lasker’s best friend and many of his fencing teammates
utilized the transportation funds and rode taxis to and from school on a daily basis. Such a
113
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
114
Ibid.
William Celis, “Kansas City Praises Desegregation, But State Officials Say It Isn’t Enough,” New York
Times, 25 September 1991, B6.
115
244
luxury was short-lived, however, as the transportation budget was slashed in 1995, and the
state was thus no longer mandated to cover transportation costs for suburban transfers.116 As
a result, the number of white students attending Kansas City, Missouri School District’s
magnet schools fell rapidly thereafter.
Although Lasker entered Central on the computer side and fully intended to find a
fruitful career as a computer programmer, it was fencing and not computers that had the
most significant impact on his life. “Fencing,” Lasker stated, “derailed my plans.”117 When
Lasker graduated from Central in 1995, the senior national team and 1996 Olympic games
were reasonably within his reach. Thus, Lasker enrolled at Longview Community College in
Kansas City and continued training with Vladimir Nazlymov and competing in fencing
competitions all over the world. Lasker’s Olympic dream was never realized, though he
made the national team in 1997 and had a real shot at the 2000 Olympics, but he fell short
due to financial constraints. Lasker was having to pay his own travel expenses and could not
sustain the amount of travel necessary to make the Olympic team, despite the fact that he
was literally one competition away from securing one of two slots. With his Olympic
aspirations crushed, Lasker moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1999 to reunite with Vladimir
Nazlymov who had been hired as the head fencing coach at Ohio State University. Lasker
then began a career as an assistant fencing coach at Ohio State working with Nazlymov and
has since developed into, according to Nazlymov, “one of the best sabre coaches in the
country.”118 Today, Lasker is a sabre coach with Nellya Fencers, a private fencing club in
116
See Chapter 8.
117
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
118
Vladimir Nazlymov, conversation with author, 22 July 2013.
245
Atlanta that has produced Olympians, as well as NCAA national champions and allAmericans. Lasker is not shy about proclaiming his affection for Central’s magnet program,
suggesting that Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School was an
“extremely positive experience,” one that, he stated, “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”119
Although Anderson is not a proponent of the magnet school philosophy like Lasker,
she claimed to appreciate what Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High
School afforded her:
Do I feel like I got a good education? Yes. Do I feel like I would have gotten the
education that I got had it not been a magnet school? No. Why do I feel that way?
Because they funneled in and they brought in all that money…they wouldn’t have
done that had it not been a magnet school.120
Anderson was one of two individuals to receive a two-year Central High School Alumni
Association scholarship to attend a community college. She accepted the scholarship upon
her graduation from Central in 1995 and attended Penn Valley Community College in
Kansas City, the first in her family to attend college. Anderson spent only a semester at Penn
Valley, though, claiming that her lack of knowledge about financial aid and her family’s
inability to offer assistance left her overwhelmed and lost. But Anderson was determined to
get her degree, and she did. In 2004, Anderson, with her husband in the military, received
degrees in sociology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri-Kansas City
before receiving her master’s degree in counseling psychology from Webster University.
Today, Anderson is a school counselor, and, despite her initial struggles navigating college
life, feels that Central prepared her for life beyond high school: “So far as I’m concerned I
felt pushed; I felt challenged; I felt cared about. Because they [Central’s teachers] were
119
Terrence Lasker, conversation with author, 13 August 2013.
120
Monika Anderson, conversation with author, 9 December 2013.
246
pushing me, they saw something there, in my opinion. Maybe something I didn’t see or
didn’t notice.”121
Lasker, Anderson, and the rest of Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet High School’s class of 1995 were the first to experience four years of the fully
funded and implemented Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek magnet program in
Central’s new facility. They were also the last. A 1995 Supreme Court ruling began the slow
destruction of Kansas City’s elaborate magnet program, which included Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School.
Missouri v. Jenkins and Its Implications
The Supreme Court ruling in Missouri v. Jenkins on June 12, 1995, signified a major
setback for proponents of Kansas City, Missouri’s, magnet remedy. In a five-to-four
decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Judge Clark had improperly ordered the State of
Missouri to help pay for salary increases for teachers and staff; but perhaps the more
significant implication was that the Court called into question the broader magnet remedy
and capital improvements, as well as the suburban transfer program.122 The decision is one
that still haunts Arthur Benson:
The Supreme Court really cut us off at the knees. You know, we won in the Supreme
Court the time before on the really contentious issue about whether a federal judge
can cause taxes to be raised without a vote of the people. We won that five-to-four,
and then [Thurgood] Marshall retires. He’s replaced with [Clarence] Thomas, and we
lose five-to-four. Because of that vote. I mean it’s clearly, I mean if Marshall had not
retired, or, you know…who knows?
In the years leading up to the summer of 1995, the district had attracted roughly two
thousand suburban white students through the magnet school approach, but by the end of the
121
Ibid.
122
Missouri v. Jenkins.
247
summer had lost hundreds of those same suburban whites.123 The uncertainty of tuition
waivers seemed to be the most significant factor in persuading suburban students to look
elsewhere, despite the district’s guarantee that suburban students could attend Kansas City,
Missouri School District schools for free during the 1995-1996 school year; the ambiguity of
future years, however, resulted in many suburban families looking for more stable options
outside of the district. By August of 1995, just a month after the district and state reached an
accord that desegregation funding was to end by 1999, nearly forty percent of suburban
students who planned to attend district schools pulled out.124 “A lot of people are angry,”
suggested Al Winder, Kansas City, Missouri School District’s transportation director at the
time, “A one year deal is not good enough…they [parents] have to make plans.”125 Whereas
the state had been picking up the $6.4 million annual transportation cost for suburban
students to ride taxis from their suburban residences, the Supreme Court’s 1995 decision
terminated the transportation budget. Beginning in the fall of 1995, while suburban students
could attend the Kansas City, Missouri School District for free, no transportation outside of
district boundaries was provided.126
Further complicating the problem was the disheveled nature of the district
leadership. In February of 1995, the Kansas City, Missouri School District’s School Board
relieved Superintendent Marks of his duties just a week after a television report questioned
123
4D.
“Suburban Kansas City Students Are Leaving Magnet Schools,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27 April 1995,
124
Arthur Benson, Chronology of the Kansas City, Missouri, Desegregation Case. Missouri Valley Special
Collections, Schools-Public, Kansas City Desegregation.
Donna McGuire, “Schools See Loss from Suburbs – Desegregation Ruling’s Fallout Begins to Settle on
the KC Magnet Program,” Kansas City Star, 23 August 1995, A1.
125
126
Ibid.
248
Marks’s medical leave, for which Marks claimed was caused by stress.127 With six new
school board members having been elected in April of 1994, the board began searching for a
new superintendent. One newly appointed board member, Edward Newsome, revealed the
district’s changing attitude and direction. A 1995 Wall Street Journal article described
Newsome as “controversial” and “outspoken,” stating:
Until last year he [Newsome] was regarded as little more than a gadfly, an angry
man who showed up repeatedly to charge the board with neglecting black children.
At one meeting, the board, tired of listening, abruptly adjourned and walked out on
him. Until now Mr. Newsome is on the board himself, one of four new members,
including Mrs. Kurtz, elected last year amid a time-for-change voter groundswell.
His views sound closer to those of Clarence Thomas, the black conservative
Supreme Court Justice, than to Martin Luther King’s.128
Benson recalled how the school board changed with the 1994 school board election:
The school board changed because Jim Nutter…I’ve adored Jim Nutter almost all of
my adult life. He’s really a, normally a great progressive in the community, but here
he made a big mistake. Ed Newsome went to Jim Nutter...and they ran an anti-school
desegregation slate and got elected to the school board.
With new faces and some board members looking for a new direction, a bitterly divided
board attempted to hire a superintendent.
The school board offered John Murphy, superintendent in Charlotte, North Carolina,
the job in September of 1995 amid considerable controversy. Murphy, a white man, was
superintendent of the nearly all-black Prince George County Public Schools in Maryland
from 1984 to 1990 when he left for North Carolina. At Prince George County, Murphy
spearheaded an effort, like Kansas City, to create magnet schools to attract white students,
but by 1990 he suggested abandoning the effort, claiming that magnet schools were not the
127
Ibid.
Dennis Farney, “Fading Dream? Integration Is Faltering in Kansas City Schools as Priorities Change,”
Wall Street Journal, 26 September 1995, n.p.
128
249
best approach and that “the problems of the ’90s need different solutions.”129 Murphy,
Newsome’s first choice, never landed in Kansas City; he declined the $250,000 package,
citing fears of poor support among the school board and instead remained in Charlotte.130
Meanwhile, the acting superintendent through the transitional period, Willie Giles, faced
complaints of sexual harassment and hiring a relative who had been convicted of stealing
from his former job. Giles was eventually suspended by the board and replaced by Associate
Superintendent Larry Ramsey in October of 1995.131 Henry Williams was eventually hired
in 1996. Williams, the former Little Rock, Arkansas, superintendent, was a proponent of
neighborhood schools, which resulted in a tenuous relationship with some board members,
the Desegregation Monitoring Committee, and Arthur Benson.132 Williams’s tenure in
Kansas City was tumultuous, indeed, resulting in the school board buying out his contract
just two years after his arrival.133
While district leadership was struggling to find consistency and a single vision and
the magnet school approach was seemingly on its way out, for Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School students Jermaine Wilson, Michael Watson,
and William Winston, it was business as usual. Wilson, class of 1997, explained that he and
his classmates were mostly unaware of the struggles occurring in courtrooms and district
129
Emily Langer, “John Murphy, Pr. George’s Superintendent Who Helped Bridge Racial Gap, Dies,”
Washington Post, 24 August 2011, n.p.
130
Arthur Benson, “Chronology of the Kansas City, Missouri, Desegregation Case.”
131
Ibid.
132
Dunn, Complex Justice.
133
Ibid.
250
offices, suggesting that it was “over our head.”134 The decisions being made on the outside
were impacting the happenings on the inside, but how were they affecting the lives of
students?
The Final Years, 1995-1999
Wilson first attended the Kansas City, Missouri School District in 1990 when a sixth
grader, though he grew up not far from Central High School at Thirty-Seventh and
Cleveland. Wilson’s grandparents, who raised him, sent him to a private school through fifth
grade before deciding to have him attend Kansas City, Missouri’s, relatively new magnet
system. Wilson had a particular interest in Greek mythology as a child, so Paul Robeson
Middle School’s classical Greek theme seemed like a perfect fit and was, in fact, part of the
reason he and his grandparents made the switch from private to public school. While Wilson
was excited to attend a Kansas City magnet school, the transition was not an easy one:
I remember it being very difficult….As far as academics, I was well prepared….
Teachers in the sixth grade would tell me they didn’t know what to teach me because
I already knew what they were teaching and so, you know, “You can go to the back
of the room. You can read a book. Just don’t misbehave.” And so, I had to deal with
a lot of student issues, I guess, because I was smart….I went from being a good
student and then transitioned into the bad student. I think mainly I was bored…I
began skipping school and fighting and those types of things, which was kind of the
reset button when they pulled me out of that school [Paul Robeson] and moved me to
Central Middle.135
Despite his rough beginnings, Wilson found success at Central Middle Magnet School
Computers Unlimited. When Wilson entered the Kansas City, Missouri School District, he
was identified as a gifted student and was encouraged to attend the district’s most
academically high performing school, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy. But Wilson
134
Jermaine Wilson, conversation with author, 10 July 2013.
135
Ibid.
251
was not interested, claiming, “I didn’t want to leave out of the neighborhood. I wanted to
study computers…I wanted to go to Central High School.”136
Wilson entered the computer side of Central High School in 1993 and remained until
he graduated among the top ten in his class in 1997. Wilson “loved” the new facility, which
was just two years old when he was a freshman, but it was the computer programming
opportunities that he recalled most fondly:
I got into computer programming really heavy. Internships that my junior and senior
year I was doing at companies doing wiring of networks for corporations as a high
school student. Because I was a Lantern at the high school, so we would actually do
the wiring and the networking for the classrooms. If teachers had issues with their
computers, they couldn’t log on, we students took what we learned in those classes
and then we had to apply it. We had to go and reprogram the computer, fix their log
in, you know, look at the wiring, climbing up at the ceilings to do the wiring and
cabling. And I remember when we had the new fiber optic cabling. That was a whole
summer project for us.137
Wilson, however, appreciated more than just his computer training; he remembered with
affection his Central teachers: “I can hardly recall maybe two teachers who I would think,
you know, at this point, I would say were subpar.”138 He acknowledged the support he
received from Central’s faculty and staff: “Our principal knew us by name. Our counselors
knew who we were. Our teachers knew us.”139 However, the level of support, Wilson
explained, was not the same from those outside of the building: “As far as the outside
community coming in to support the school, I don’t really recall a lot of outside support
coming in. I don’t even recall a lot of parent involvement.”140
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid.
139
Ibid.
140
Ibid.
252
By the beginning of Wilson’s senior year, 1996-1997, suburban students, per the
Supreme Court’s 1995 order, were no longer given the opportunity to attend the Kansas
City, Missouri School District at the state’s expense but were required to pay tuition; nor
were they provided transportation. Moreover, the school board had approved its 1996-1997
Desegregation Remedy Plan, which trimmed Missouri’s desegregation contribution from
$110 million to $74 million.141 The reduction in funding was in addition to $34.2 million in
cuts the board had approved earlier in the year, and there were even serious discussions
about closing one or more of the district high schools.142 The 1996-1997 school year was the
first time in eleven years that the state contributed less than one hundred million dollars to
the Kansas City, Missouri’s, magnet schools.143 The district appeared to be weaning itself
from almost two decades of state desegregation funding.
Although 1995-1997 was a period in which Kansas City’s magnet plan seemed in
serious jeopardy, Wilson, who was a junior and senior during the time, did not notice
anything different at Central: “As far as the judicial piece and the equity of the monies, that
wasn’t something that, you know, I can recall being something that was on our horizon.”144
Wilson, it seems, was not necessarily concerned with the reason behind the magnet schools
in Kansas City but rather the opportunity before him—opportunities that, he explained, still
seemed plentiful throughout his time at Central, even after the 1995 Supreme Court
decision. Wilson was a driven student who enjoyed computers and took it upon himself to
141
Phillip O’Connor, “Plan Calls for State Cut of $36 Million KC School District’s Magnet Blueprint Goes
before Judge June 3,” Kansas City Star, 29 March 1996, C1.
142
Ibid.
143
Moran, Race, Law, and the Desegregation of Public Schools.
144
Jermaine Wilson, conversation with author, 10 July 2013.
253
make sure he was challenged. But Wilson credits his academic success and collegereadiness, in large part, to Central’s computer magnet theme:
Things I did my freshman year of college, you know, I didn’t have to take any
remedial courses…we came here prepared. We had students, including myself, that
had high ACT scores. I think even the process that we went through with choosing
our elective classes…And so we were equipped with that because of our themes and
stuff. That was like our major. We had a huge selection, but we knew when we were
enrolling in classes we also had to look at our transcript. This is how many credits
you need. This is what you need to take. This is what you have to take.145
Though Wilson did not pursue computers as a college major, he did work at a computer lab
during his four years as an undergraduate and eventually taught high school computer
classes—at his alma mater, no less—Kansas City’s Central High School.
After graduating from Central, Wilson ventured off to St. Joseph, Missouri, and
Missouri Western University where he received his bachelor’s degree in business
administration. He worked as a manager for K-Mart Corporation out of college but found
the work unfulfilling, so he landed a consulting position with the Kansas City, Missouri
School District working with the Career and Technical Education program. While he was
working as a consultant with the district, he was approached by the vice principal at Central
High School about filling an opening in the school’s business education department; he
accepted, got certified, received his master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, and then
went on to obtain his master’s degree in Counseling and Guidance before getting his
educational specialist degree in administration. He is now working toward his PhD in
education and is the principal at Kansas City, Missouri’s, Martin Luther King, Jr.
Elementary School.
145
Ibid.
254
Wilson served in the role of student, teacher, counselor, and assistant principal at
Central and thus has a unique perspective from which to reflect. He remains a supporter of a
magnet-type approach to education, stressing the importance of student choice in academic
success:
As a guidance counselor, I always told students that “What it is that you like to do is
what you will do well.” And so I just believe, you know, that motivational piece and
plugging into student interest is still a big piece that was there during the magnet
years. I don’t think it’s as much a piece that’s there now unless you have educators
and leaders who are building that philosophy into their school environments.146
Wilson certainly found much professional success after leaving Central, and he is quick to
credit his opportunities as a student at Central during the magnet years as one of the reasons
for his academic and professional accomplishments, claiming that his time at Central
between 1993 and 1997 was “overwhelmingly positive.”
Whereas Wilson was closing his high school chapter and leaving Central behind in
1997, Michael Watson was just beginning his. A junior in the fall of 1997, Watson
transferred from nearby Lincoln College Preparatory Academy to Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High where he completed his junior and senior years.
Watson’s primary motivation for making the switch from Lincoln to Central was to join
Missouri High School Hall of Fame Coach, Jack Bush, and Central’s basketball squad.
Watson is a Kansas City native, having grown up in a house near Thirty-Fifth and Prospect
not far from Central High School, and attending Kansas City, Missouri School District
schools from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Watson grew up in a single-parent
household, but he described how his extended family formed a strong support system:
My mom raised my older brother and I by herself. And so I grew up with an
extended family, though, of cousins, and my mother was one of ten. And so we had a
146
Ibid.
255
huge family….We were like brothers and sisters. We all went to the same schools
growing up. We all spent the night at each other’s houses. You know, they were like
brothers.”147
Watson felt a similar connection with his neighbors that he felt with his extended family:
The neighborhood was, I mean, everybody knew each other. Everyone knew each
other. We went to the same schools, the same churches. We shopped at the same
grocery store….We shopped at the same malls. We had an understanding of where
we were in life. This is the eighties…that was a time when I saw Prospect, you
know, in great condition. You had grocery stores. You had businesses…And so for
us, it was that ten-to-fifteen square block radius in the city. We knew we had
everything we needed right there, and so we rarely ventured out.148
Watson’s most influential supporter, however, was his mother, who, he explained, ingrained
in him from an early age a certain pride for himself, his family, and his neighborhood. So
when Watson was entering the sixth grade in 1992, a decision had to be made. With the
magnet middle and high schools firmly established, Watson had to decide where he wanted
to go, and the decision came down to either Lincoln or Paul Robeson. Watson was a gifted
student, but he was also a gifted athlete; his mother wanted him to attend the district’s most
academically rigorous school, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, but Watson himself
wanted to attend the middle school classical Greek magnet at Paul Robeson, where there
was a greater emphasis on athletics. In the fall of 1992, Watson headed off to Lincoln,
claiming: “I had to go to Lincoln…my mother made me go to Lincoln.”149
Despite some initial hesitance, Watson ended up appreciating his time at Lincoln, a
school that he claimed lived up to its reputation and challenged him academically: “As a
seventh grader, we were in algebra; eighth grade we were in geometry; ninth grade we were
147
Michael Watson, personal conversation with author, 21 October 2013.
148
Ibid.
149
Ibid.
256
in pre-calculus. You know, we were like challenged through the roof.”150 But Watson’s first
love was basketball, and he stated that he realized as early as seventh grade that he aspired
to play professional sports, and he was committed to seeing his dream become a reality. So
as a twelve year-old, Watson prepared himself for a future as an athlete. But Lincoln was not
known for its athletic teams; Watson explained, “The down side to Lincoln was sports;
athletics weren’t big…it was all about academics at Lincoln.”151 By the end of his
sophomore year at Lincoln, Watson had developed into quite a basketball player, and he was
passionate about the sport and finding a way to hone his skills. Thus, with his mother’s
support, Watson decided to transfer to Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet High School in 1997 for his junior and senior years. Central, Watson suggested,
“had the best athletes…had an Olympic weight room; they had everything.”152 Though after
transferring to Central, Watson had wondered if he had made a grave mistake.
Watson recounted his initial days at Central and referred to the school environment
as a “zoo” compared to what he was used to at Lincoln:
I was like, this is unreal…I mean it was like, you’re in the heart of the inner-city.
You’re in the heart of the inner-city, like the hood. Where gang turfs meet. You’re
right there…Lincoln was an oasis. Lincoln was a paradise…the only thing we were
fighting over [at Lincoln] was school spirit…So I was like, “Oh, my gosh. What did
I do.”153
Watson attributed at least some of his initial culture shock to the overall size of Central,
which in 1997 numbered 1,176 students. Lincoln was considerably smaller with a grades-
150
Ibid.
151
Ibid.
152
Ibid.
153
Ibid.
257
nine-through-twelve student population of 573.154 The most striking difference between
Lincoln and Central, according to Watson, was in the academic quality and expectations:
You know, the academics…I had done all the classes. I could have graduated [from
Central] as a sophomore with the classes that I took at Lincoln…Literally, I would
have had to take senior English and another high school credit. I would have
graduated…Central was known for bringing athletes. They were known for
producing the top athletes, and so academics…they were at the level they needed to
be. For me, I already did all that stuff as a seventh grader and eighth grader. I had
been in algebra. I had done, you know, all that stuff.155
But Watson was also quick to point out that he had some “great” teachers at Central, most
notably his senior English teacher, a black woman, who he said pushed him and prepared
him for college; he stated, “She loved me, and you know, it was tough love though.” Yet
Watson admittedly did not transfer to Central for academics; he had gone to Central for the
basketball team.
When Watson arrived at Central in 1997, he joined classmate and basketball
teammate William Winston. Like Watson, Winston had grown up in one of Kansas City’s
inner-city neighborhoods at Thirty-third and Bellefontaine, just two blocks from Central
High School. Winston hailed from a large extended family, and all of them, he stated, went
to Central; he intended to continue the tradition: “That was my vision. When I was in
elementary school, I just wanted to go to Central. I never wanted to go to any other
school.”156 Having grown up in a house with twelve people under one roof, many of them
Winston’s older cousins who attended Central, Winston looked forward to the day when he
too would don Central gear.
154
Arthur Benson, unpublished demographic data.
155
Michael Watson, conversation with author, 21 October 2013.
156
William Winston, conversation with author, 24 October 2013.
258
Winston’s path to Central was difficult. His father was never in his life, so he grew
up with his mother and younger brother, a brother who was often in trouble. Winston,
though, vowed to himself not to follow the path of his younger brother and some of his
cousins and to avoid the “bad things” that they had done.157 And while he claimed to have
learned from the mistakes of his eleven older cousins, it was his relationship with his mother
that kept him out of trouble:
I don’t like to see my mother upset, and that’s still how I am still to this day. I hate
seeing my mother upset. By me being the oldest, you know, it’s just something about
seeing my mother upset. It just kills me. There were certain things I didn’t do as a
child because I knew it would break my mother’s heart.158
Winston explained that his mother was always involved in his academic and extracurricular
life, but he maintained that he also benefited from a close-knit neighborhood community
growing up; he recalled walking to elementary school with cousins, friends, and neighbors:
We used to all just meet up on my porch and just go to school from there. You know,
like a lot of the cousins, and a lot of the neighborhood would always meet on my—
the corner house was my house—so we all met there and walked to school.
As the district transitioned to magnets in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Winston took
advantage of the opportunity to attend a school outside of his immediate neighborhood, and
in 1993, like Watson, Winston attended Lincoln, though he always knew his time at Lincoln
would be short, suggesting, “I was going to Central regardless.”159
Winston’s decision to attend Lincoln was little more than a whim; he remembered
how he and a friend decided to attend Lincoln middle over Central: “I was in fifth grade, and
157
Ibid.
158
Ibid.
159
Ibid.
259
my homeboy was like, “Let’s go to Lincoln middle, let’s go to Lincoln middle.’”160 So
Winston did go to Lincoln for middle school, but he then transferred to Central in 1995 for
his freshman year, claiming, “I’m an athlete, and Central breeds the best athletes, and so it’s
like, ‘That’s the school for me’”161 Thus, Winston entered Central on the classical Greek
side and promptly joined the basketball team, where he and Watson, under the tutelage of
basketball coach Jack Bush, would develop into two of the best basketball players in the
city.
Upon his transition from Lincoln middle to Central High School, Winston noticed
some immediate differences, the most obvious of which was the facility. Winston was not
aware of the ongoing court case, but he certainly appreciated what Central had to offer,
stating, “We were spoiled, you know.”162 Winston was impressed with the swimming pool,
weight room, and athletic facilities at Central, but he was less enthusiastic about the
academics:
I’m gonna tell you, from elementary school through twelfth grade, I really, there
wasn’t really a challenge. Or, I didn’t challenge myself. I remember doing work or
doing homework, but it’s like I didn’t see how some of that stuff was going to
benefit my future.163
Winston did recall teachers at Central who challenged him, though he felt that his status as
an elite athlete affected how teachers treated him:
When you’re an athlete, you’re a school favorite, and me and Mike Watson were the
guys. We ran the school for the most part. It was our school. You know, when you’re
an athlete, I guess that’s the way it is. But certain teachers did [push me to excel] and
some teachers didn’t…if you asked me, did I get anything out of high school, did I
160
Ibid.
161
Ibid.
162
Ibid.
163
Ibid.
260
get any knowledge out of it [high school]? I would probably say I needed some
more.164
Yet, Winston described his time at Central as “fun,” especially his time on the basketball
court. Central had a history of fielding competitive basketball squads, and by the time
Winston made the varsity team in 1997 and was joined by transfer Michael Watson, the
school was garnering city-wide attention.
Watson recalled his senior season in the fall of 1998: “it was like we were rock stars.
You know, my whole team, everywhere we went, we were rock stars….So everything we
did was, like, huge.”165 Watson was recruited heavily by many Division I schools, but he
was compelled to stay close to his mother in the city where he felt connected. Thus, Watson
spurned the out-of-state offers and signed with the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the
fall of 1998, where he received a full four-year scholarship. Winston did not receive as much
Division I interest and ultimately landed a basketball scholarship at Park University in
Parkville, Missouri. Park was not necessarily where Winston had envisioned playing his
college ball, but his ACT score limited his opportunity: “I got a fourteen the first time [on
the ACT]….I got a fourteen the second time, and I settled.”166 Winston’s struggles on the
ACT, he concluded, partly resulted from his lack of preparation at Central; he declared, “I
didn’t know nothing about some of those things…never was taught some of those things.”167
Watson, on the other hand, felt ready for college, but he attributed his college readiness to
Lincoln and not Central:
164
Ibid.
165
Michael Watson, conversation with author 21 October 2013.
166
William Winston, conversation with author 24 October 2013.
167
Ibid.
261
I went to Lincoln College Preparatory Academy. That was the name of Lincoln….So
everything we did was college prep. Everything we did was about college...Without
Lincoln I wouldn’t have been ready for college. There’s no way, and my teammates
will tell you. You know, because they took their ACT and their ACT wasn’t my
ACT, you know, because they weren’t prepared at Central.168
When Watson ended his collegiate career at UMKC, he held five Summit League
career records, including leading the league in all-time scoring.169 Indeed, Watson had an
illustrious college career, which eventually resulted in signing a contract with the Boston
Celtics on draft night. Watson had realized his goal, something he had set out to do when he
transferred to Central in 1997; he had reached the professional ranks. Though Watson’s stint
in Boston lasted only a summer, he eventually ended up playing six professional seasons
abroad in Poland, France, Turkey, Italy, and Puerto Rico. Watson once again calls Kansas
City home, as he returned in 2007 and just recently assumed his new position as Director of
Athletics for the very district he grew up attending, the Kansas City Public Schools, in a
position that he called a “dream job.”170
Coincidentally, Watson’s former teammate, Winston, also works for the Kansas City
Public Schools. He began his career in the district as a paraprofessional and has since
worked his way up to a position as Coordinator of Recruitment, Retention, and Follow-up in
Career and Technical Education, exhibiting the same determination and resolve that got him
through college. College did not come easy for Winston, who struggled to find success on
and off the basketball court, but he persisted and graduated from Park with a bachelor’s
degree in business management. Winston suggested that he had every intention of becoming
168
Michael Watson, conversation with author, 21 October 2013.
Steve Newton, “30th Anniversary Q&A with Michael Watson,” 22 December 2011,
www.thesummitleague.org.
169
170
Michael Watson, conversation with author, 21 October 2013.
262
a “businessman,” but his passion, he explained, was in working with inner-city students and
improving their lives, claiming, “I want to work where I came from.”171
Watson and Winston were among two of the last graduates of Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School. By the spring of 1998, the Kansas City,
Missouri School District had begun scaling down the magnet-themed schools in favor of
neighborhood schools, part of the board-approved transition plan of 1997 that called for,
among other agenda items, school closings and magnet-theme elimination.172 The intended
goal was for the district to achieve unitary status by 2002, thus ending judicial intervention.
Certainly, when Judge Russell Clark stepped down in 1999 after overseeing the Jenkins case
for over two decades and was replaced by conservative U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple,
an end to Jenkins appeared imminent. Whipple actually attempted to dismiss the case in
1999, asserting that everything possible had been done to remedy all prior constitutional
violations, but Arthur Benson’s plea to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed
with his reasoning, reinstated court oversight, at least for the time being.173 But for all
intents and purposes, 1999 signified the end of the magnet remedy, and the district
confronted yet another extremely difficult transition period in the face of issues of
accreditation, falling enrollment, and financial constraints.
171
William Winston, conversation with author, 24 October 2013.
172
“Pathways to Excellence: The Action Plan for the Kansas City, Missouri School District, 1997-2002,”
Kansas City, Missouri School District, State Historical Society of Missouri, Arthur A. Benson II Papers, Box
569.
Phillip O’Connor, “Benson Appeals Ruling on Desegregation Lawsuit,” Kansas City Star, 17 December
1999, A1.
173
263
CHAPTER 9
CONCLUSION: INTERPRETATIONS AND
APPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
The Clock Runs out on Kansas City, Missouri’s, Magnet Plan
Reflecting on his work designing Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet High School, one of the architects, Arthur Rainwater, claimed to have no regrets:
I personally put everything I had into that [Central]. I mean, I really did. And I think
a lot of other people did too, not just me. Arthur, certainly; Arthur Benson. But all
kinds of people in the district were very serious about trying to make it work. There
were always struggles, certainly. There were people within the district who didn’t
believe in it. I’ll admit, I was a true believer—still am.1
Rainwater recognized the imperfections of the process, stating, “[d]id we make mistakes? Of
course we did.” Yet, Rainwater explained that, in his opinion, the positives of the magnet
plan outweighed the negatives:
I certainly think there were improvements in facilities. I don’t think that there was
any question about that. I think that there were certainly improvements in
opportunities. Kids had opportunities in both sides in that program to do things that
they would never experience in their life. And to, and to learn within an environment
that fit their needs. I mean, I don’t think there’s any question about that.2
Benson echoed Rainwater’s sentiments, claiming, “[F]or the twenty-two or twenty-four
thousand kids who went through the system during those ten years, it was hugely important
1
Arthur Rainwater, conversation with author, 29 July 2013.
2
Ibid.
264
and a really good experience for them.”3 Benson, however, acknowledged that certain
components of the magnet implementation were more successful than others:
I’m often asked to kind of grade it [magnet implementation]. And I said, “Well, the
only way to sort of grade it is to look at the goals of the litigation.” The judge found
that there were those four effects…Back in the seventies, we had two teachers’
strikes. The buildings were falling down, and the school district was bankrupt…I
mean it was skeletal. So on funding we get an A. I mean we accomplished that
completely. And as to the dilapidated, literally, rotted buildings…we get an A on that
too…But for the racial integration, I kind of give us a B-. During the ten years of
which our voluntary magnet plan was in effect, we achieved more racial integration
than any other school district in the nation under a court order at the time. We were
achieving more racial integration year by year than anybody else…and we ought to
get an A [until 1995], but after we lost in the Supreme Court, it gradually went
away…As to inferior education, we clearly get an incomplete. Because the education
was inferior then, and it is still inferior now.4
Rainwater, too, while proud of the facility upgrades and improved opportunity, recognized
the academic struggles: “I don’t think we made the kind of, certainly, the kind of academic
success that I wish we had.”5 But Rainwater was quick to follow up with a note on the
timeframe, which he claimed was insufficient for adequate change, especially at Central:
And even Central, if you think about it, about how long it takes. I mean, you’re
really talking about, from the time that you have full implementation, you’re really
talking about ten to fifteen years before you see real, long-term change in terms of
kids learning. I believe very strongly…there just wasn’t that much time.6
Benson bemoaned the timeframe, as well, but also understood that the people of Missouri
were “so anxious” to end the case, something he ascribed to the state and Attorney General
3
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
4
Ibid.
5
Arthur Rainwater, conversation with author, 29 July 2013.
6
Ibid.
265
John Ashcroft’s campaign to convince Missourians that the Kansas City, Missouri School
District was a “sink hole.”7
Indeed, by 1999 when the district began to seriously scale down its magnet plan and
started converting magnet schools back to neighborhood schools, Kansas City’s bill had
exceeded two billion dollars. The money had largely come from the state and Missouri
resident taxpayers. A May 2000 U.S. News and World Report article summed up the general
consensus among most Missouri residents:
The Olympic-size swimming pool, primo indoor running track, and personal
computers for almost every student at Central High School in Kansas City, Mo.,
were supposed to lure white suburban students to the inner-city school. And magnet
programs in computer science and classical Greek civilization were supposed to
foster high achievement. But for all the grand hopes when Central was completed
nine years ago at a cost of $32 million, the school has achieved neither integration
nor excellence. The same is true of nearly all of Kansas City’s schools, which are
physically impressive but academically struggling, despite an influx of $2 billion
over 15 years.8
In 1999, the district graduation rate at fifty-seven percent was twenty-one percentage points
behind the state average, and that was up from 1997 when the gap was twenty-four percent
and the graduation rate was fifty-one percent.9 Moreover, by 2001, just a year before the
court declared that the Kansas City, Missouri School District achieved unitary status, sixtyfour percent of district tenth graders were performing in the lowest proficiency category in
math and only .2 percent were performing in the highest.10
7
Arthur Benson, conversation with author, 23 October 2013.
8
Ben Wildavsky, “Kansas City Schools Learn the Hard Way,” U.S. News and World Report, 8 May 2000,
26.
“The Future of the Kansas City, Missouri School District,” Ingram’s, May 2002, 57-63, Missouri Valley
Special Collections, SC 73.
9
10
Ibid.
266
In 2003, Judge Whipple dismissed the case; the twenty-five-year Jenkins odyssey
was over, and in terms of integration and academic achievement, there appeared to be little
to show for it. In fact, a 2002 study conducted by the Harvard Civil Rights Project found that
the Kansas City, Missouri School District was among the most racially segregated schools in
the country; this, after two billion dollars was spent to integrate the schools.11 Of the 32,670
district students in 2002, roughly seventy percent of them were black.12 In 1984, just prior to
the magnet implementation, there were 36,650 district students, and about sixty-seven
percent of the students were black.13 The data is discouraging, but this project was not
merely about recounting the disparaging numbers but exploring the lived experiences of
black students who attended Kansas City, Missouri’s, flagship magnet school, Central
Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School.14 It was in this vein, then, that I
set out to address the following questions:
What were the experiences of African American students at Central High School
between 1988 and 1999?
What structures of academic and social support existed for African American
students at Central during the identified years?
What were African American students’ perceptions of efforts to integrate Central
during the magnet years?
11
Erika Frankenburg and Chungmei Lee, “Race in American Public Schools: Rapidly Resegregating
School Districts,” The Civil Rights Project, 8 August 2002, 1-23.
12
Arthur Benson unpublished demographic data, 2000-2012.
13
Arthur Benson unpublished demographic data, 1954-1984.
14
See Chapter 7
267
How did the magnet theme affect the subsequent lives of the individuals
interviewed?
In the next section I will explore some of the major themes that emerged from the
oral history interviews.
Oral History Revelations
The experiences of the eleven narrators who attended Central Computers
Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School between 1988 and 1999 varied
considerably. Many factors affected each individual’s experiences; certainly, the following
figured prominently: the individual’s support system, the individual’s interest level in
computers and/or athletics, and the individual’s intrinsic drive and determination. Generally,
however, the students with whom I spoke were positive about their experiences. This is not
to suggest, however, that each individual supported the magnet approach. KarriemHardaway, class of 1992, for example, was most critical of the district’s magnet schools,
which she viewed as essentially catering to white suburban residents. Yet KarriemHardaway still expressed a certain admiration for Central, a school that many of her family
members had attended as well. Evans, class of 1993, and Anderson, class of 1995, were also
somewhat critical of the magnet system, but they too found the school environment to be
positive. In fact, all of the narrators’ general characterization of their high school experience
at Central was positive. It is possible that time-gone-by has resulted in a romanticized vision
of the high school experience, but not one of the individuals whom I interviewed
remembered their high school experience at Central in a negative fashion. Some of the
individuals enjoyed their time at Central more than others, and it appears that their
268
respective interest in computers and/or classical Greek/athletics had much to do with how
each individual experienced the magnet theme.
While Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School was
designed to entice students from all over the city with a particular interest in computers or
Olympic sport to enroll, of the eleven individuals I interviewed, eight lived within blocks of
Central. It was essentially their neighborhood school, and they did not even entertain the
thought of attending one of the other district magnet schools. For these students, Central
occupied a special place, and it seems that it had quite a lot to do with the fact that their
family members hailed from Central. Slaughter, class of 1993, Williams, class of 1993, and
Lasker, class of 1995, were the only three students who did not live in the Central
neighborhood. Slaughter attended Central for its fencing program; Williams initially
attended for computers but switched to the athletic side; and Lasker, though becoming
deeply involved in fencing, originally was attracted to Central for its computer magnet. Each
of the other individuals lived in the neighborhoods around Central and attended Central, not
for its magnet theme, but because of its proximity to their residence. For these neighborhood
students, such as Norton, class of 1990; Evans, class of 1993; Wilson, class of 1997;
Watson, class of 1999; and Winston, class of 1999, the magnet theme piqued their interest
and ultimately shaped their experience. Norton, Evans, and Wilson were all very interested
in computers, and both Norton and Wilson participated in the Lantern program providing
building-level technical support. All three individuals’ affinity for computers, they
explained, enhanced their experiences at Central. Watson and Winston’s high school
experience was enriched, they suggested, by their participation and interest in athletics. For
neighborhood residents Shakur, class of 1989, as well as Karriem-Hardaway, class of 1992,
269
and Anderson, class of 1995 their indifference to the magnet themes resulted in a less
dynamic high school experience. Yet they never seriously considered transferring to another
magnet; their emotional connection to Central was too great.
A relatively consistent theme throughout the interviews was a recognition that
academic rigor was lacking. Eight of the eleven narrators described feeling that they were
inadequately challenged at Central. For many, the realization came after they left Central
behind and entered a college classroom. Shakur explained how she recognized soon after
arriving in Columbia in 1989 to attend the University of Missouri that Central High School
had not prepared her for college. This scenario played out routinely in the interviews.
Anderson and Winston, similar to Shakur, Evans, and Williams, specifically noted that they
realized upon entering college that they felt insufficiently prepared. Slaughter and Watson,
two students who transferred into Central from a different high school, claimed to have
noticed a disparity in academic rigor upon their transfer into Central. Slaughter, who
transferred to Central from Ladue High School in St. Louis in 1991, and Watson, who
transferred from Lincoln College Preparatory Academy in Kansas City in 1997, both
explained how their former schools presented far greater academic challenges than Central.
There were several students, however—Norton, Lasker, and Wilson—who suggested their
academic preparation at Central was sufficient. Norton explained that he felt adequately
challenged at Central and prepared for life in the military after graduating in 1990,
suggesting that two years of computer curriculum readied him for a position as a
communication technician in the Navy. Lasker, too, experienced what he described as a
challenging learning environment, as did Wilson. Wilson, who attended Missouri Western
University as a freshman in 1997, in fact, attributed his college readiness to Central’s
270
Computer Unlimited Magnet theme, which he suggested helped him avoid remediation his
first year. There was a sense among most of the narrators that a challenging academic
program was absent, but the many and varied extracurricular offerings at Central seemed to
enrich their collective school experiences. Central Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek
Magnet High School offered a wide array of extracurricular programming in both computers
and athletics, and the majority of students with whom I spoke took advantage of the
opportunities and suggested that they benefited from them.
The narrators spoke affectionately about their former teachers, coaches, and
administrators, in many instances recalling those by name who provided noteworthy
academic and/or social support. For many of the narrators, Central’s faculty served a vital
support role, and this appeared consistently throughout the identified years, 1988 to 1997.
Family support was less consistent; whereas some of the narrators enjoyed actively involved
parents or guardians, others received little academic and social support from families. Yet
family support did not determine academic success. For example, Shakur, who was raised
by a single mother who struggled with alcoholism and was largely absent in her academic
life, graduated as valedictorian of Central’s 1989 graduating class. Anderson, who also
lacked support at home found success at Central, as well. Anderson became one of two
students selected for an alumni college scholarship. Shakur and Anderson were both
intrinsically motivated and hard workers. And while neither benefited from a strong support
system at home, they both found support elsewhere. Anderson credited her teachers for
offering much-needed social and academic support, and Shakur explained that she immersed
herself in extracurricular activities, where she found support among students and staff as
part of student council, track, and cheerleading. She also benefited, she explained, from a
271
well-connected and supportive neighborhood community, though the strength of the
neighborhood community did appear to dwindle over the course of the magnet years.
Whereas Shakur and Norton described a dynamic neighborhood community in the late
1980s, that same community, Wilson suggested, was not much involved or supportive in
1997.
The narrators described being mostly unaware of the Jenkins case, suggesting that
they were interested in the changes that were occurring around them but less concerned with
why it was happening. The thrust of the Jenkins case was to bring about voluntary
desegregation through programmatic innovation and facility upgrades. This, however, did
not seem to be of great interest to the former students whom I interviewed. There was a
certain awareness among the narrators that more white students were present at Central
during the magnet years and that certain students, mostly white students, were arriving at
school in taxis, yet it did not seem to garner much notice. Williams, for example, who
recognized in 1993 that his Central soccer and wrestling teams were more diverse, explained
that it was not something he thought about at the time. This was a common sentiment
throughout the interviews, which might have had something to do with the fact that
integration was relatively limited in scope. Indeed, Central reached twenty percent white in
1993, but it was short-lived; the percentage of white students at Central fell every year
thereafter. Integration, the narrators recalled, was simply not foremost on their minds, but
the magnet upgrades most certainly were, especially the new Central High School building
completed in 1991.
The students who were genuinely involved in computers and/or athletics appeared to
be the ones who benefited most from the magnet money, especially those students who
272
participated in unique programs, such as the Lantern program, a group of high-performing
students that provided technical support within the building; or an Olympic sport, such as
fencing. For students such as Norton and Wilson, the Lantern program was most valuable,
providing life-long skills and knowledge in computers. Likewise, Slaughter and Lasker
found the fencing program to be life changing, shaping their career paths and offering
experiences that would have been impossible without the well-resourced fencing program.
Yet even students who did not participate in an Olympic sport or have a keen interest in
computers, suggested they noticed and benefited from the vast increase in resources during
the magnet years, including Anderson and Karriem-Hardaway, who were critical of the
magnet approach. The narrators unquestionably noticed and appreciated the expensive
magnet changes and referenced such things as the new building, new course offerings, new
extracurricular offerings, new computers, new books, new uniforms, new equipment, and
expensive travel opportunities. The upgrades resulted in profound life changes for several of
the narrators.
Fencers Slaughter and Lasker provide perhaps the most dramatic example of how
Central’s magnet program affected the subsequent lives of students. Despite the fact that
Slaughter participated in Central’s fencing program for just two years, it changed the
direction of his life. The same is true of Lasker, who benefited from four full years of
fencing. After graduating from Central, both Slaughter and Lasker continued to compete in
fencing on the national scene. Both individuals today are still involved in fencing as
coaches, and both expressed gratitude for Central’s fencing program and in particular
Vladimir Nazlymov, Central’s esteemed fencing coach. Fencing, it seems, provided both
individuals an opportunity to get involved in a unique Olympic sport that neither Slaughter
273
nor Lasker would have likely been able to participate in had it not been for Central
Computers Unlimited/Classical Greek Magnet High School. Indeed, Slaughter and Lasker
offer quite vivid examples of the influence of Central’s classical Greek theme, and their
stories are what district leaders had envisioned when designing Central.
Computer students Norton, Evans, and Wilson, who had a real interest in computers,
seemed to benefit from the magnet theme as well. Norton described how he utilized his
computer education and training from Central as a radio technician in the military, and
Evans pursued a degree in computer science before working as a computer programmer,
which she attributed, in part, to her experience at Central. Wilson, too, who found a career in
education, first taught computer courses when entering the field. On the athletic side, in
addition to Slaughter and Lasker, Karriem-Hardaway, Williams, Watson, and Winston all
participated in collegiate athletics after leaving Central. Watson even went on to have a
successful professional basketball career abroad, and Williams and Winston remained
athletes throughout their college experience, Williams in wrestling and Winston in
basketball. Karriem-Hardaway, who had a robust high school track career, received a
scholarship in track but gave it up just a semester into her college experience to pursue her
passion and a career as a beautician.
The power of story and the use of oral history is a tremendous asset in ascertaining a
fuller, more complete picture. These eleven interviews provide great insight into the African
American experience at Central during the magnet years. Indeed, the intent here is not to
generalize but rather to illuminate each individual’s life story through oral history and
subsequently use these stories to enrich our understanding of how Kansas City’s magnet
remedy affected the lives of black students.
274
Concluding Thoughts
In May of 2002, just prior to the official end of the magnet remedy and on the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the filing of what became known as Jenkins v. Missouri, Arthur
Benson suggested that the success of the magnet remedy would be decided in subsequent
years:
Within the next several years final grades will be issued, and as a community we
should all hope that Judge Clark’s optimistic vision for Kansas City schools is fully
realized, because, if it is, the reward for the entire community will be profound.
By 2005, total kindergarten through twelfth grade district enrollment had fallen to 27,141,
fourteen percent of which were white students, and it would continue to fall each year
thereafter.15 Last year’s total district enrollment, for the 2012-2013 school year, dropped to
an all-time low, 15,401, and a mere nine percent were white.16 Academic performance,
which was substandard during the magnet years, remained so upon the district’s return to
neighborhood schools. The Kansas City, Missouri School District’s state assessment scores,
graduation rate, and composite ACT scores, for example, have remained well below state
averages. The poor academic performance in the years following the magnet plan has even
resulted in the district being stripped of its accreditation. So, needless to say, in the wake of
the magnet plan, the district has not, as Benson hoped it would in 2002, fulfilled Judge
Russell Clark’s optimistic vision.
Central High School, the city’s oldest high school and flagship magnet school, has
experienced a similar fate in the aftermath of the district’s magnet remedy. Academic
performance has consistently remained below even district averages, as has the graduation
15
Arthur A. Benson Papers, unpublished demographic data.
16
Ibid.
275
rate. The halls, which not long ago were bustling with thousands of ninth through twelfth
grade students, dropped to 204 in 2012, of which, literally, fourteen students were white.17
Clearly, then, issues of segregation and equality in education are very much relevant
today in Kansas City and have yet to be resolved, despite sixty years of desegregation efforts
including more than two billion dollars in educational upgrades as part of the district’s
elaborate magnet plan. The plan essentially resulted in the Kansas City, Missouri School
District completely rebuilding its physical infrastructure and redesigning its curriculum. The
Kansas City, Missouri School District’s story is long and complicated, and no school
illustrates it better than Central High School, which is why Central served as the impetus of
this project.
It is as critical as ever today that we continue to probe and question efforts of school
desegregation and ongoing educational segregation. This project is unique in that it attempts
to understand Kansas City’s voluntary desegregation plan from the perspective of the
African American student, not least because it is a perspective that is underrepresented in the
literature, but more importantly because it yields valuable insight into how black students
experienced the most expensive desegregation remedy to date. Such a line of inquiry is
critical to ascertaining a more thorough understanding of desegregation and continuing the
process of deconstructing the complex nature of race and schooling in Kansas City,
Missouri. Thus, this project might transition nicely into a deeper exploration of the student
experience in Kansas City across additional magnet schools during the identified years, or
perhaps a study that examines the student experience at the eighteen Kansas City, Missouri
School District elementary schools that remained traditional schools during this same time
17
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
276
period—the so-called “black corridor schools” that were part of the Effective Schools
project.18 This study could also be used to explore theory, investigating how this research
informs theories about educational inequality. Regardless of next steps, this research is
critical to better understanding how students experienced desegregation efforts in Kansas
City at a time when the Kansas City, Missouri School District once again confronts an
uncertain future.
18
See Chapter 7 for a discussion of the “black corridor schools.”
277
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289
VITA
Bradley William Poos was born on March 8, 1978 in Salina, Kansas. Attending
Salina Public Schools through junior high, Mr. Poos moved with his family to Wichita,
Kansas, in 1992, where he attended high school at Maize High School, part of Maize Public
Schools. Mr. Poos then attended the University of Kansas and received his bachelor of arts
in history, graduating in 2000. Upon graduating from K.U., Mr. Poos worked as a research
analyst at a Kansas City law firm, before embarking on a career in education.
Mr. Poos entered graduate school at Rockhurst University in 2001 to pursue his
master’s degree in education, seeking certification in social studies. In 2003, he graduated
with his master’s and began his teaching career at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in
Overland Park, Kansas, where he taught middle and high school social studies. Mr. Poos
again returned to graduate school in 2005, this time working towards his master’s degree in
counseling at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Upon completion of his master’s in
counseling, Mr. Poos accepted a counseling position in the North Kansas City Public
Schools at Eastgate Middle School and worked as a counselor there from 2007 to 2012.
In 2010 Mr. Poos returned to the University of Missouri-Kansas City to pursue an
interdisciplinary Ph.D., majoring in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Foundations with a
minor in the Social Science Consortium. Mr. Poos accepted a graduate research position in
the Division of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Foundations in 2012; he worked as a
graduate research assistant through 2013. Mr. Poos also served as an adjunct professor at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rockhurst University between 2012 and 2014. Mr.
Poos has accepted a faculty position in Avila University’s School of Education beginning in
the fall of 2014.
290
While working on his Ph.D., Mr. Poos has presented at numerous local and national
conferences and has continued an active research agenda pertaining to issues of race and
inequality in education, including a publication in the Sound Historian. He has several other
manuscripts in progress. Mr. Poos has also served as the vice president for the
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student Council and is a member of the Phi Kappa Delta Honor
Society.
291